Author Archive

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 375: The Child Support of Cromdor the Condemned

Want to read the full story? Check it out at Lightspeed!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (39.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Rated R

The Child Support of Cromdor the Condemned

by Spencer Ellsworth

Cromdor the Calderian, thrice-cursed, thrice-condemned, (I’ve forgotten the rest, but believe you me, there is thrice-more) had nearly finished his tale when the traveler slipped in. As he had for the last ten days and ten before that, Cromdor had a packed house. Course, “packed house” is relative—last winter a mudslide tore away half the common room, and Yargin had been rebuilding when he fell through the thatch and died on that floor. Damned if Greta, his daughter, didn’t ever try to stop his goats from getting in, or doing their business in the corners.

So’s only the old folks came. A fine summer night, and we’d have sunlight until midnight, and stories to go with it, but the young ones were mostly down at the church, praying for the holy warriors on their mission in Ursalim, worshipping the new Bleeding God. Don’t the weather matter? The crop? How’s one god gonna keep track of all that?

Point being, the traveler stuck out.

PodCastle logo

Call for Submissions: Artemis Rising II

During the month of September, PodCastle is looking for submissions to celebrate ARTEMIS RISING, a special month-long event across all three Escape Artists podcasts featuring stories by some of the best female and nonbinary authors in genre fiction.

For ARTEMIS RISING, PodCastle is looking to fill the entire month with original fantasy fiction. Payment will be $.06 per word.

Our sister podcasts are also taking original submissions for the event. Please visit Escape Pod for science fiction, and PseudoPod for horror.

Who Can Submit

Anyone who identifies as a woman, to whatever degree that they do. Nonbinary authors are also  welcome and encouraged to submit stories.

As always, we at PodCastle strongly encourage submissions from people of backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented or excluded from traditional fantasy fiction, including, but not limited to, people of color, LGBTQ authors, persons with disabilities, members of religious minorities, and people from outside the United States.  Our goal is to publish fantasy that reflects the diversity of the human race, so we strongly encourage submissions from these or any other underrepresented groups.

What to Submit

Send in your best original fantasy fiction between 2,000 – 6,000 words.

You can send PodCastle one submission for ARTEMIS RISING. If we have another story under consideration already in the general submissions queue, we’d be happy to consider an additional story for ARTEMIS RISING.

We do accept simultaneous submissions, with one exception: while you’re welcome to submit to all three ARTEMIS RISING calls (Escape Pod for science fiction and PseudoPod for horror), please don’t send the same story to more than one ARTEMIS RISING call at a time. Wait until you receive an answer, and then feel free to submit it to another Escape Artists call, if appropriate.

While we’ll be accepting a limited number of stories for ARTEMIS RISING, all stories will be considered for regular PodCastle too.

How to Submit

Start writing now, and keep an eye out for a special ARTEMIS RISING Submittable portal. Submissions will be open for the month of September 2015.

Please reference our usual submission guidelines for formatting.

Thanks, and we look forward to reading your stories!

Graeme Dunlop and Rachael K. Jones, Editors

Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, Guest Co-Editor

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 369: The Chimney-Borer and the Tanner

PodCastle 369: The Chimney-Borer and the Tanner is a PodCastle original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (31.0MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Rated R

The Chimney-Borer and the Tanner

by Thoraiya Dyer

Hoping I’d steal their souls instead of hers, my birth mother hid me in a chimney-borer’s home.

I never did harm any of that happy family. They are peacefully dead of old age, by now. That’s something, at least, to be proud of. Even if I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to skin a god.

It took a decade – far too long – for me to learn that Orfro wasn’t really my father. If golden jaguars could sometimes throw black cubs in a litter, I reasoned, why couldn’t yellow-haired people make black-haired babies? I hoped I’d get to look more like Orfroas I grew older. I was mesmerised by the white-blond curls, not just on his head, but across his shoulders and down his back. When he bent over to bore chimneys, the curls could be seen continuing on, disappearing between his buttocks into the loose, woven trousers he wore.

 

 

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 368: Dinkley’s Ice Cream

Originally appeared in “Fierce Family”, a Crossed Genres anthology showing positive representations of QUILTBAG families, in January of 2014.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (25.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Rated G

Dinkley’s Ice Cream

by Effie Seiberg

Shanti squirmed with anticipation, trying to wriggle away from my hairbrush but caught by the knots in her curls. “A fair!” she said. “With monkeys and elephants and a magic man!”

“Yes, a fair!” I agreed, not wanting to confirm the rest – not wanting to set up any disappointment as I set down the brush on her bedside table. She beamed up at me with her sunshine smile and I looped a thin elastic around a pigtail. Four years old, and I’d never been able to take her before. Too expensive.

Fairs don’t come to the city. It’s too crowded, and where would they set up the tents? To even get to the fair it was a five dollar bus ride (two dollars for kids), plus a dollar eighty five for the shuttle if you didn’t walk. We walked.

 

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 367: The Washerwoman and the Troll

Originally appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, May 2013.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (19.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Rated PG

The Washerwoman and the Troll

by Julian Mortimer Smith

Bunchunkle was magnificently ugly. The trollmothers said there hadn’t been such an ugly child since Grimshik’s day, and Bunchunkle wore it with the pride and mirth befitting a troll. He could pull a face to make you void your bowels and howl with terror. He had a genius for mischief that rivaled even that of old Quillibim, the Arch Rascal of Moldy Stumps. There was much speculation about what would happen if a human ever laid eyes on Bunchunkle, but as far as anyone knew it had never happened, for Bunchunkle was as quick and sly as he was ugly.

When the faefolk decided it was time to drive the old washerwoman from the Blinking Woods, they did not come to Bunchunkle immediately. He was reclusive and cantankerous and did not like to be disturbed. Besides, they were loath to seek him out for fear of laying eyes on his revolting face. But nobody doubted that he would succeed if all else failed. They knew he was there as a last resort.

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 366: Sticks and Stones

Originally appeared in Crossed Genres.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:45 — 29.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Rated PG-13

Sticks and Stones

by Nathaniel Lee

The dead body was ugly, as dead bodies tended to be. The man’s face was swollen and purple-black with the blood that had pooled in his cheeks before congealing. Blood on the sidewalks had smeared with the rain before the sun rose. Lillian stared at the stains with her hands in her pockets, toying with her ring.

“Detective Staunton?”

“Blunt force,” she said, not turning around. “Probably some pretty heavy words, by the look of them; he’s almost crushed. Loser, maybe. Failure. Took him by surprise, I think; the first blow from the back spun him around. You can see the blood spatter where he turned.”

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 361: Traveller, Take Me

First published in On Spec.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:37 — 22.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Rated PG

Traveller, Take Me

by Kate Heartfield

The Canadian National Railway wants to know what to call the copper town tucked into the dogleg on the border between Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The radio operator says they’re threatening to call it Flin Flon – if they don’t hear any different from us.

We all laugh ourselves giddy at that, all of us in the Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Co. Ltd. Go ahead, we say, call it Flin Flon. Bad luck to call it anything else. It’s the only name the place has had for its 15 years now, and if that’s not the judgment of history in these uncertain times I don’t know what is.

All of us in the mine company know the story of how Tom Creighton named the place for a character in a dime novel, back in 1914. Tom himself tells it to anyone who’ll half listen.

But he never tells the story of how he found the novel in the first place, and what that book did, once he started to read it. He never says where the book is now. I hope it’s fallen apart, battered into mush by the rain and snow. Unreadable.

 

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 359: The Litigatrix

First published in GigaNotoSaurus. Read it here!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:39 — 45.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Raged PG.

Dave Thompson‘s Kickstarter campaign: click here!

Dave’s story “Saint Darwin’s Spirituals” at Variant Frequencies.

The Litigatrix

by Ken Liu

The fifteenth day of the first month in the seventh year of the Huayin Era:

The old man, Hae-wook Lee, had been bedridden for months. He lay on the sleeping mat, wrapped in a blanket. The drugs helped him sleep, and forget about the harsh words of his son.

It was an unseasonably warm winter day, here in this corner of Northeast Asia. Though the fire in the kitchen hearth next door had been extinguished, thegudeul smoke passages below the floor would continue to radiate residual heat for several hours. The room was so warm that the maid, Kyoon, had left the windows open to give the old man some fresh air, dry and invigorating after the new snow of the day before.

He dreamt that he was having a dinner of gogi gui. That pretty girl from years ago served him. He felt a pang of regret.

 

PodCastle logo

PodCastle Editorial Announcement and Submissions Update

In January of 2015, editors Dave Thompson and Anna Schwind announced their retirement from PodCastle. New editors Kitty NicIaian and Dawn Phynix were scheduled to take their place in April. While they’ve been hard at work behind the scenes for the last few months, they’re unfortunately no longer able to take the helm at PodCastle as previously planned. We wish them all the best as they move on to new adventures.

In their place, Dave and Anna have tapped Rachael K. Jones and Graeme Dunlop as the new co-editors of PodCastle.

Rachael K. Jones is a PodCastle author, occasional guest host, and longtime fan. Since 2013, she served as Escape Pod’s Submissions Editor. She is excited for the opportunity to carry on Podcastle’s tradition of excellent, diverse fantasy fiction alongside Graeme.

Graeme Dunlop has been formally associated with Escape Artists since March 2011, starting with Pseudopod as Audio Producer. He’s an avid fan of PodCastle and has hugely enjoyed narrating there on a regular basis. Since February 2014 he has assisted as PodCastle Associate Editor. He looks forward to working with Rachael to continue bringing high-quality fantasy to the ‘Castle’s many fans.

PodCastle submissions will be temporarily closed during April while the upcoming schedule is arranged. We’re unable to proceed with the the previously scheduled quarterly themed anthology, but all open submissions will be read, considered, and responded to before we reopen for new submissions.

Have any questions? Graeme and Rachael can be reached at editor@podcastle.org.