PseudoPod

by Garrett Croker

“The Shopping Cart Apocalypse” is a Pseudopod Original, inspired by actual parking lots and actual injuries. Some details have been embellished.

GARRETT CROKER lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area. When he’s not a writer, he has at different times been a college English teacher, a copywriter, and a marketer. He received his MFA in creative writing from Mills College. His fiction has appeared previously in Mad Scientist Journal‘s anthology SELFIES FROM THE END OF THE WORLD. He can be found online at THE BALLPOINT APOCALYPSE, or follow him on twitter @garrettcroker.

Your reader – Alasdair Stuart – was just recently in the United States and is currently moving house (although not to the US, afaik). And I could not ask for a better boss.

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The beautiful Horror in Clay 01 – The Murders in the Rue Morgue mug Kickstarter can be accessed at the link! Check it out, for the love of God, Montressor!

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I wanted to bring your attention to a project from Orrin Grey and Strix Publishing. You already know and love Orrin Grey.

PSEUDOPOD 155: THE WORM THAT GNAWS

PSEUDOPOD 262: BLACK HILL

PSEUDOPOD 415: NIGHT’S FOUL BIRD

Strix Publishing has launched a Kickstarter to bring us a new and expanded hardcover edition of Orrin’s collection NEVER BET THE DEVIL AND OTHER WARNINGS. This new edition includes all ten stories from the original, as well as the heretofore hard-to-find “A Night for Mothing” and an all new story, “Goblins.” As of the time of this recording, it’s just passed the halfway mark with almost three weeks to go, so it’s time for the add-ons and additional goals to creep out of the corners.

So, please check it out: NEVER BET THE DEVIL AND OTHER WARNINGS Kickstarter. You’ll be glad you did!

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The CAST OF WONDERS Flash Fiction Contest info can be accessed at the link.

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Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.

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“Eli had never seen so many scattered across the lot so early, their sleek plastic frames a startling red against the radiating blacktop. Some congregated in small packs, propped haphazardly onto planters two by two, or grouped into neat lines just outside the cart returns, or facing outward from each other in small, defensive circles that only had the appearance of random chance. Others hunted alone, hiding behind cars, or rolling slowly down the lot’s near imperceptible incline, or simply waiting patiently in plain sight, loose wheels spinning slowly in the breeze. There was no order to unify the disparate groups, as he might have hoped. This was a disaster.”

Author : Dagny Paul Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Artist : Christopher Walker Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 505: There Is No Road through the Woods is a PseudoPod original. “Silly as it seems — no, is — I’m actually a bit afraid of plants. I like trees, […]

Author : Alyssa Wong Narrator : Mae Zarris-Heaney Host : Dagny Paul Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Artist : Eugie Foster Discuss on Forums “The Fisher Queen” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2014. Escape Artists would like to draw your attention to a fantastic event happening next week […]

by Dagny Paul

“There Is No Road through the Woods” is a Pseudopod Original. “Silly as it seems — no, is — I’m actually a bit afraid of plants. I like trees, and I have a garden, but there’s something unnerving about being among all these living things that we treat as though they’re just background. They’re alive. It freaks me out. The title of this story comes from a Rudyard Kipling poem, The Way Through The Woods. I read this poem when I was about three quarters of the way finished with the piece, and it really shaped the way it turned out.

The Way Through The Woods

by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods

Seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again,

And now you would never know

There was once a road through the woods

Before they planted the trees.

It is underneath the coppice and heath,

And the thin anemones.

Only the keeper sees

That, where the ring-dove broods,

And the badgers roll at ease,

There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods

Of a summer evening late,

When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools

Where the otter whistles his mate,

(They fear not men in the woods,

Because they see so few.)

You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,

And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

Steadily cantering through

The misty solitudes,

As though they perfectly knew

The old lost road through the woods.

But there is no road through the woods.

DAGNY PAUL is an 8th-grade English teacher who lives in New Orleans with her husband and three-year-old son. She has an unhealthy (but entertaining) obsession with comic books and horror movies. After we purchased this story, Dagny was asked to come on board with PseudoPod as Associate Editor.

Your reader – Tatiana Gomberg – is a critically acclaimed actress of stage, screen, and the audio booth. She lives in New York City. She can be contacted for work at her VOICE 123 account.

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I wanted to bring your attention to a project from Orrin Grey and Strix Publishing. You already know and love Orrin Grey.

PSEUDOPOD 155: THE WORM THAT GNAWS

PSEUDOPOD 262: BLACK HILL

PSEUDOPOD 415: NIGHT’S FOUL BIRD

Strix Publishing has launched a Kickstarter to bring us a new and expanded hardcover edition of Orrin’s collection NEVER BET THE DEVIL AND OTHER WARNINGS. This new edition includes all ten stories from the original, as well as the heretofore hard-to-find “A Night for Mothing” and an all new story, “Goblins.” As of the time of this recording, it’s just passed the halfway mark with almost three weeks to go, so it’s time for the add-ons and additional goals to creep out of the corners.

So, please check it out: NEVER BET THE DEVIL AND OTHER WARNINGS Kickstarter. You’ll be glad you did!

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The CAST OF WONDERS Flash Fiction Contest info can be accessed at the link.

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Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.

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“The summer it happened, Mr. Mason cut down the diseased elm in his front yard and found a fist-sized clot of blood, bone, and hair in the middle of its trunk. I didn’t see it, but Ellie Langford, who was a year ahead of me and lived next door to Mr. Mason, said that she had been sitting on her front porch, waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up, when all of a sudden Mr. Mason’s chainsaw died and she looked up to see red splatters on his wife beater and a puzzled look on his face.”

Escape Artists would like to draw your attention to a fantastic event happening next week at DragonCon, the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction.

This annual award will be presented for the first time in 2016—for works published in 2015.The Eugie Award honors stories that are irreplaceable, that inspire, enlighten, and entertain. It will shine the spotlight on stories that are beautiful, thoughtful, and passionate. That change us and the field. The recipient will be a story that is unique and will become essential to speculative fiction readers.

The finalists for this award are:

“The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsin Muir

“Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong

“The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” by Catherynne M. Valente

“Pocosin” by Ursula Vernon

“Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight” by Aliette De Bodard

To highlight how fantastic these authors are, we are re-running three stories on Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Pseudopod:

Escape Pod 408: Immersion by Aliette De Bodard

Podcastle 198: Urchins, While Swimming by Catherynne M. Valente

Pseudopod 492: The Fisher Queen by Alyssa Wong

Also make sure to check out Ursula Vernon’s story “Jackalope Wives” available to read for free at Mothership Zeta. And mark November on your calendar for an upcoming story by Tamsin Muir.

Pseudopod 492: The Fisher Queen

by Alyssa Wong

“The Fisher Queen” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2014. It is available to read free online at fu-GEN.org. “The Fisher Queen” was on the shortlist for the 2014 Nebula along with Eugie Foster’s last story, “When It Ends, He Catches Her” which ran last year on Pseudopod. It has been translated into Chinese, French, and German. “The Fisher Queen” is set up in the fashion of traditional oral storytelling, where truth and myth blend together. However, it’s about the very real effects of societal, systematic violence against women.

Alyssa Wong is a Shirley Jackson-, and World Fantasy Award-nominated author, shark aficionado, and 2013 graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. She made the shortlist for the 2015 Stoker Award and won the 2015 Nebula Award for “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” which you should go check out at Nightmare Magazine. Her work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Tor.com, Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and Black Static, among others. She is an MFA candidate at North Carolina State University and a member of the Manhattan-based writing group Altered Fluid, and can be found on Twitter @crashwong. Alyssa Wong has been deservedly shortlisted for the Joseph W. Campbell Award for New Writers this year, and “The Fisher Queen” is part of why she made it to the list.

Your narrator – Mae Heaney is originally from Manila, Philippines and currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her Irish husband, 2 young children and Parmi the Chook. She is an IT professional who once briefly dabbled in theater, and loves to bake to tame the voices in her head. She is very successful in changing nappies under five minutes, but fails miserably in trying to read her toddler’s mind and in updating her blog celticpinaymom.blogspot.com.

Your guest host this week is Associate Editor Dagny Paul. Dagny is an 8th-grade English teacher who lives in New Orleans with her husband and four-year-old son. She has an unhealthy (but entertaining) obsession with comic books and horror movies.

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MY MOTHER WAS A FISH. That’s why I can swim so well, according to my father, who is a plain fisherman with a fisherman’s plain logic, but uncanny flair for the dramatic. And while it’s true that I can cut through the water like a minnow, or a hand dipped over the edge of a speedboat, I personally think it’s because no one can grow up along the Mekong without learning two things: how to swim, and how to avoid the[...]

Author : John Mile Deisinger Narrator : Luis Moreno Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Artist : Christopher Walker Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 504: Cuernavaca is a PseudoPod original. “I’d like the audience to ask themselves what ‘belief’ means to them, and whether they think the things we believe in can protect […]

by John Mile Deisinger

“Cuernavaca” is a Pseudopod Original. “I’d like the audience to ask themselves what ‘belief’ means to them, and whether they think the things we believe in can protect us from a world that doesn’t seem to believe in much at all.”

JOHN M. DEISINGER is a writer from Milwaukee who lives in Michigan. He blogs at JohnMDeisinger.com

Your reader – Luis Moreno – is an actor from New York City. He holds an MFA in acting from Columbia University, and you can learn more about him at his website, luismorenotheactor.com. He loves recording audiobooks, and does so for many publishers; his narration work can be found on Audible and other commercial platforms.

Luis’ audio producer is the impeccable Branan Edgans (whom you last heard reading on Pseudopod in The Influence Of Thomas Glittio. Dan Powell is a podcast producer, audio engineer and sound designer. He is one half of Dead Signals, the production team between found-footage horror podcast Archive 81 and their more recent sci-fi adventure story, The Deep Vault. He can be tweeted @stereophobe.

And we would also like to thank Chris and Rob at BrickShop Audio in Industry City, Brooklyn for the recording help!

The CAST OF WONDERS Flash Fiction Contest info can be accessed at the link.

Info on Anders Manga’s album can be found here.

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“Morelos state, as you know, is the crucible of the People’s Revolution. This was where the Grito de Dolores found its most fervent listeners. This was the homeland of Zapata, who I rode with and followed. You should have seen the landlord’s faces when we asked them for the taxes. When we burned their fields of sugar cane, so that the campesinos could plow them fresh and plant corn and peppers. They squealed like pigs in hot grease. How they threatened us, with their army, with their policemen, with their money, with their God. And all of this is to say nothing of the ones whose houses we burned.

But excuse me. My point is, I know the land well. The mountains that separate the city from the Distrito to the north. The patchwork fields, the lakes and small forests, where the peasants trap snakes for meat and smoke little green cigars. You are a peninsulare, of course, yes? You would have been lost, camarada. Your Spanish might serve you well in Monterrey or Madrid, but you’d be lost in the cornfields. The tongue of conquered peoples lives there still, it’s more Nahua than nacionale down there.”

Author : Robert E. Howard Narrator : Anson Mount Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums “The Horror From The Mound” was first published in WEIRD TALES, May 1932. Anson’s audio producer is the impeccable Branan Edgans (whom you last heard reading on Pseudopod in The Influence Of Thomas Glittio. […]

by Robert E. Howard

“The Horror From The Mound” was first published in WEIRD TALES, May 1932.

Most famous for inventing the modern sword & sorcery tale with his Conan stories, ROBERT E. HOWARD (1906-1936) often introduced horror elements as a threat in his short fiction but the evocation of supernatural dread is only incidental in most of his tales; the chronicling of titanic adventure is the primary purpose. When Howard later switched from fantasy to westerns, he made the transition with this story. Howard’s major horror genre reputation rests with three stories (sadly, all of which are a bit too long for the podcast): “Black Canaan” (Weird Tales, 1936) was praised by Lovecraft for its “genuine, regional background and its compelling picture of the horror that stalks through the moss-hung, shadow-cursed, serpent-ridden swamps of the American far south”; “Pigeons from Hell” (Weird Tales, 1938) was praised by Stephen King as “one of the finest horror stories of our century” and “Worms of the Earth” (Weird Tales, 1932) is thought by many Howard fans to be his best story. The Del Rey series of Howard’s collected fiction includes Horror, Historical Adventures and Desert Adventures, in addition to his better known Conan, Kull and Solomon Kane tales. Please see this site. More info on Howard can be found at the REH Foundation and Project Pride, the caretakers of the REH House and Museum in Cross Plains, TX.

Your reader – Anson Mount – should need no introduction, but just in case we hope you’ve been watching him on AMC’s HELL ON WHEELS. He was last heard on Pseudopod in the Artemis Rising episode Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by Kelly Link.

Anson’s audio producer is the impeccable Branan Edgans (whom you last heard reading on Pseudopod in The Influence Of Thomas Glittio. Dan Powell is a podcast producer, audio engineer and sound designer. He is one half of Dead Signals, the production team between found-footage horror podcast Archive 81 and their more recent sci-fi adventure story, The Deep Vault. He can be tweeted @stereophobe.

And we would also like to thank Chris and Rob at BrickShop Audio in Industry City, Brooklyn for the recording help!

The CAST OF WONDERS Flash Fiction Contest info can be accessed at the link.

Info on Anders Manga’s album can be found here.

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“Steve Brill did not believe in ghosts or demons. Juan Lopez did. But neither the caution of the one nor the sturdy skepticism of the other was shield against the horror that fell upon them — the horror forgotten by men for more than three hundred years — a screaming fear monstrously resurrected from the black lost ages.”

Author : D. Morgan Ballmer Narrator : Jarius Durnett Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 502: The Trauma Box is a PseudoPod original. The Trauma Box by D. Morgan Ballmer Most everyone in Fairview knows of the Trauma Box. None agree on its origins. Some claim the box […]