Elf Employment by Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt Alex was seven when he ran away to join Santa’s elves. If anyone had asked why he wanted to leave home, he would have said “I hate it here!” (Actually, he would have said, “I’m not telling you!”, then raced into his room and slammed the door, […]
DRINK ME (A Flash Fiction Extravaganza) Presenting an Intoxicating and Delicious Flight of Fantasy Fiction for Listeners with Discerning Palettes! Please indulge in the following tastes: “The Wine,” by M.C. Wagner read by C.S.E. Cooney A PodCastle Original! It’s always the wine. A glass at my elbow, or a servant tottering after, stoppered flask in […]
Seasonal Disorder by Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt I opened my freezer to get some ice for my first gimlet of the day and heard a tiny tapping sound coming from one of the ice trays. I thought about slamming the freezer door shut and running for my car in the driveway, tearing away to […]
Right Turns by Tim Pratt We talked, in our tiny apartment, with the kitchen so small we couldn’t even pass each other on the way to the refrigerator, with our pipes that howled and clanked when we tried to turn on the hot water. I’d just gotten a promotion, and though it meant less teaching […]
Catching the Spirit by Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt Pretty much nobody knows how, exactly, the Christmas Spirit started to spread. One theory goes that a child in Meridian Mississippi was bitten by an infected reindeer, and then spread the plague at her school Christmas pageant, where it jumped to a couple of long-haul truckers who […]
The Secret Beach by Tim Pratt I pushed through the overgrown shrubs, barely making out a trail, and reached the fence, where I found the chain-link had been cut apart and then re-closed with fuzzy pipe cleaners, green and red and blue. (Does anyone use pipe cleaners to clean their pipes anymore, or are they […]
Fable From a Cage by Tim Pratt Let me tell you a little fable, a story I crafted while sitting inside this dangling cage, where the rooks shit on me and steal my bread all day, and the smoke from your town fires stings my eyes all night. Did you know the owls feed me? […]
Hey everyone! People have been asking us if any of the stories we ran over the last year-ish are are eligible for awards. And in fact, several of them are! Thanks for listening, and happy voting! Short Story: To Follow the Waves, by Amal El-Mohtar, read by Marguerite Croft, originally published in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk […]
The Ghost of Christmas Possible by Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw I was asleep: to begin with. The hour was just before midnight on Christmas Eve when a ferocious knocking woke me from my slumber. My first muddled thought, or rather hope, was that some specter or spirit stirred beneath the cramped rafters of my […]
Dave and Anna (um, Anna? ANNA?!?! Where’d you go?) talk about Tim Pratt’s new book Briarpatch! If you’re looking to get that special someone (or yourself) something for the holidays, look no further!