PseudoPod

by S.L. Gilbow.

“Mr. Hill’s Death” was first published in The Dark Magazine and was reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2015. “The English assignment in the story is based on a project I used to give when I was teaching high school. The idea for the short story came to me when a student showed a video of a car wreck to illustrate the word ‘tragic.'”

A 2011 graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop, S.L. GILBOW‘s short stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, The Dark Magazine, Betwixt and many other publications. Gilbow is a retired lieutenant colonel and navigator with twenty-six years of Air Force service and over 2000 flying hours in the B-52. He currently teaches English at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton, Virginia. You can learn learn more about S. L. Gilbow at slgibow.com.

Your narrator – Mat Weller – well, you may heard of him if you keep your ears open.

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Mr. Hill’s death is posted on YouTube. You can’t actually see him. Just the back of his sunflower yellow convertible, top up, cruising along a two lane road. The fifty-second clip, taken from a dash cam in a following car, seems rather ordinary at first, and you might think you were watching a typical drive through a wooded countryside. That is if the clip weren’t titled “Tragic Car Wreck.”

Author : Chris Kuriata Narrator : Spencer Disparti Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums “Sack Race To The River” was first published in issue 3 of Phobos in December, 2014. Sack Race To The River by Chris Kuriata After cramming ourselves into the sack—my brother and I crouched on […]

by Chris Kuriata

“Sack Race To The River” was first published in issue 3 of Phobos in December, 2014.

CHRIS KURIATA has written stories about home invading bears, elderly poisoners, and ghastly family photographs, which have appeared in many fine magazines. He lives in the Niagara Region. He has a funny and creepy story included in the upcoming Exile anthology THE PLAYGROUND OF LOST TOYS.

Your narrator – Spencer Disparti – is a poet and the podcast host for “The Green Magick Podcast”. You can find most of his work at Skeletopia and you can find the podcast in iTunes or at Podbean.com.

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After cramming ourselves into the sack—my brother and I crouched on top of Dad’s shoulder blades like a pair of folded wings—Dad galloped down the stairs and out into the night. My brother and I cheered, enjoying the midnight wind blasting across our faces. Dad ran to the escarpment, grabbing the trunks of skinny trees to keep his balance as we skidded down the incline. He ran to the edge of the river, huffing and puffing, checking the time on his phone.

“Seven minutes,” he said. “Thank God we’ve started now ’cause we need practice. We need so much practice.”

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Author : Ryan Dull Narrator : Joe Calarco Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 472: Self Portrait With Embellishments is a PseudoPod original. Self Portrait With Embellishments by Ryan Dull These are the things you need to make art: Discipline, Opportunity, Inspiration. Discipline begets Craft, Output, and Dispassionate […]

by Ryan Dull

“Self Portrait With Embellishments” is a PseudoPod Original.

RYAN DULL Ryan Dull lives in Washington, DC. Find him on Twitter at @RyanSoDull.

Your narrator – Joe Calarco works with the Coeurage Theatre Company.

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These are the things you need to make art: Discipline, Opportunity, Inspiration.

Discipline begets Craft, Output, and Dispassionate Self-Criticism. I’ve had Discipline since I was eight years old.

Opportunity means that you can afford the time and the food and the ink required to make art. I’ve had Opportunity since I was a pair of star-crossed gametes.

I have never had Inspiration.

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Authors : Jon Padgett, Nathaniel Lee and Lena Coakley Narrators : Jon Padgett, Graeme Dunlop and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 471: Flash On The Borderlands XXX: Flash Fiction Contest IV is a PseudoPod original. These are the winners of the fourth round of the […]

These are the winners of the fourth round of the Pseudopod Flash Fiction Contest. All are Pseudopod Originals.

The next phase of the Flash Fiction Contest will be run by Escape Pod. Get your science fiction flash prepared.

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“Cold Spots” by Lena Coakley

Lena says about this story, “To me, ‘Cold Spots’ is a very New England story. All the imagery is pinched from childhood memories of my grandmother’s summerhouse on the Connecticut shore. I see it as being about the disappointment that comes when we realize adulthood is not what we thought it would be when we were children, and the desire to get back to a self that may never have existed. This will be my first podcasted story so I’m beyond excited to hear it.”

Lena Coakley’s YA fantasy, Witchlanders, was called “one stunning teen debut” by Kirkus Reviews and won an SCBWI Crystal Kite award. Her forthcoming novel, Worlds of Ink and Shadow, is a portal fantasy about the young Brontë siblings and the imaginary countries they wrote about in childhood. It will be out January 5th from Amulet Books in the US and Harper Collins Canada in Canada. She lives in Toronto and is the current Vice President of CANSCAIP, the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers. Follow her on twitter @lenacoakley

Your reader – Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali lives in Houston, Texas with her husband of twenty-five years and three children. By day she works as a breast oncology nurse. At all other times she juggles, none too successfully, writing, reading, gaming and gardening. She has self-published one novel entitled An Unproductive Woman, has published a story at Escape Pod and has a story upcoming in the An Alphabet of Embers anthology. Khaalidah also reads slush at Escape Pod where she is on a mission to encourage more women to submit science fiction stories.

Of her alter ego, K from the planet Vega, it is rumored that she owns a time machine and knows the secret to long youth.

You can catch her posts at her website, www.khaalidah.com, and you can follow her on twitter, @khaalidah.

Salt on my lips. Sun on the sea. My body slides through the water easily as if it had never aged. I have to swim farther and farther out to find you, but you are always there. In the cold spots.

On land the past is vague and distant, but something about the sudden gooseflesh, the delicious shock between my legs, brings you back, and I remember.

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“Down” by Nathaniel Lee

Nathaniel Lee lives with his family in South Carolina. His work has appeared in dozens of venues online and off, including several times previously here on PseudoPod. He serves as the editor of the Drabblecast and assistant editor at Escape Pod.

Your reader – Graeme Dunlop is a tall man, mightily shouldered and deep of chest, with a massive corded neck and heavily muscled limbs. He is clad in silk and velvet, with the royal lions of Aquilonia worked in gold upon his rich jupon, and the crown of Aquilonia shines on his square-cut black mane; but the great sword at his side seems more natural to him than the regal accoutrements. His brow is low and broad, his eyes a volcanic blue that smolder as if with some inner fire. His dark, scarred, almost sinister face is that of a fighting-man, and his velvet garments cannot conceal the hard, dangerous lines of his limbs.

It started with the basement. The steps descended into darkness. The light was on, I could see the light, the light was glowing its little heart out, but about three steps from the bottom, it just stopped. The shadows thickened and there was a hint of concrete floor, then nothing. I didn’t want to go down there, even though I’d just heard the dryer buzz.

Linny went to investigate. She made it five steps down. Then she was gone, too. And the darkness was closer.

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Author : Helen Marshall Narrator : The Word Whore Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums “The Santa Claus Parade” was first “published” by Helen as a Christmas card which she had specially printed with artwork by Chris Roberts and sent around to friends and family in 2013. It was […]

by Helen Marshall.

“The Santa Claus Parade” was first “published” by Helen as a Christmas card which she had specially printed with artwork by Chris Roberts and sent around to friends and family in 2013. It was reprinted and first made commercially available in GIFTS FOR THE ONES WHO COME AFTER (ChiZine Publications, 2014) which recently won the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award! “This is one of the weirdest stories I’ve written but I had a pretty gleeful grin on my face the whole time I was typing it out.”

HELEN MARSHALL is an award-winning Canadian author, editor, and doctor of medieval studies. Her poetry and fiction have been published in The Chiaroscuro, Abyss & Apex, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Tor.com and have been reprinted in several Year’s Best anthologies. Her debut collection of short stories HAIR SIDE, FLESH SIDE (ChiZine Publications, 2012) was named one of the top ten books of 2012 by January Magazine. It won the 2013 British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer and was short-listed for an 2013 Aurora Award by the Canadian Society of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her second collection GIFTS FOR THE ONES WHO COME AFTER was released in September, 2014. Follow her on Twitter.

Your narrator – The Word Whore runs Air Out My Shorts with Preston Buttons. This is an intermittent humor podcast which includes a not insignificant amount of booze and fiction of dubious quality. They are the patron saints of the Escape Artists Submissions Staff, the holiest of the slush pile. It is rumored that candles with religious imagery have been purchased at a gas stations and renegade modifications with AOMS fan art have been used to modify them. They are burned by submissions staff while conducting reviews.

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Some people think the Santas are smiling.

The Company tries to weed out that kind of thinking pretty early on with videos from the eighties, people with big hair, shoulder pads, smiling in bleached out, crackling colours. There are diagrams about brain function. A specialist gave a talk on the subject but I slept all the way through it. Sweet dreams.

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Author : Caitlin Marceau Narrator : Brian Rollins Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums “Hunger” was published through Sanitarium Magazine, issue no. 23, in July of 2014. The text can be read at Shadows At The Door. “I’m Canadian and winters can be long and rough up here, and […]