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PodCastle 538: Itself at the Heart of Things

Originally published in Shimmer.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:23 — 30.2MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13.

Itself at the Heart Of – Poetry Generator!

Itself at the Heart of Things

by Andrea Corbin

“The acts of life have no beginning or end. Everything happens in a completely idiotic way. That is why everything is alike.” — Tristan Tzara, 1922

On the floor, I hiked my skirts up and began to disassemble myself, starting with my left knee.

“How is that going to stop the Szemurians? How is that going to protect us? Can’t you help me, for God’s sake?” Benoît said this, sounding increasingly frantic, on each pass through the sitting room as he tried to gather up whatever he could — to board the windows, bar the door, barricade the entire house, as though that were important. He broke apart the dining table we had found on a trip to Lyon in 1921, so he could use the boards to block the picture window. It had been a good table, or at least we had good meals at it over the past three years. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 537: To the Moon

Originally published in Fireside.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:46 — 34.2MB)

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Show Notes

Rated: PG-13, for inhumanity and painful truths.

To the Moon

by Ken Liu

Long ago, when you were just a baby, we went to the Moon.

Summer nights in Beijing were brutal: hot, muggy, the air thick as the puddles left on the road after a shower, covered in iridescent patches of gasoline. We felt like dumplings being steamed, slowly, inside the room we were renting.

There was nowhere to go. Outside, the sidewalk was filled with the droning of air conditioners from neighbors who had them and the cackling of TVs at full volume from neighbors who hadn’t. Add your crying to the mix, and it was enough to drive anyone crazy. I would carry you out on my shoulders, back in, and then out again, begging you to sleep.

One night, I returned home after another day of fruitless petitioning at the Palace of Mandarins, having gotten no closer to avenging your mother. You sensed my anger and despair and cried heartily in sympathy. The world seemed so oppressive and dark that I wanted to join you, join the sound and the fury that filled the mad world. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 536: The Threadbare Magician — Part 2

Originally published in Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:04 — 53.3MB)

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Show Notes

Note that this is one part of a two-part episode. You can read and listen to the first part here.

Rated R, for cursing wizards and magical desires.

See below for links to Cat’s projects:

Cat’s Patreon.

The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers live and on-demand classes aimed at fantasy and science fiction writers. Fun fact: co-editors Khaalidah and Jen met at one of Cat’s workshops. They are highly recommended!

Some books and collections for sale: Hearts of Tabat, Neither Here Nor There, Moving from Idea to Finished Draft.

The Threadbare Magician — Part 2

by Cat Rambo

[Continued from Part 1, available here]

I hadn’t consulted an oracle in years. Never in this area.

I went to a closet and took down the usual sorts of accumulated boxes before finding a box of cedarwood, holding a small red velvet pouch. I took out the contents and cast the runes.

And frowned at them. Had I been overly casual, insulted them?

I took the time to center myself and cast again.

The same result. Which couldn’t be right.

An Oracle here in Friendly Village itself? Pleasant, unmagical Friendly Village?

Only a few trailers away? (Continue Reading…)

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ARTEMIS RISING 5: Call for Submissions

In March 2019, Escape Artists will bring you ARTEMIS RISING for a fifth year. This special month-long event across all four Escape Artists podcasts is a celebration of stories written by women, in the broadest definition of the word. This year, PodCastle’s ARTEMIS RISING guest editors will be Krystal Claxton and Elora Gatts!

ARTEMIS RISING specifically highlights women in genre fiction, a demographic that has been underrepresented until recent years. This showcase helps to address that historical imbalance and correct the impression, which continues to persist in some social circles, that women cannot write excellent genre fiction.

Who Can Submit

Submissions are open to anyone who identifies as a woman to any degree.

In past years, we have specifically included the term “non-binary” in our Artemis Rising submission calls — you may notice it is missing this year.

English is flawed in its ability to accurately represent the breadth of human genders, and as such the language we use is always evolving. We respect the feedback that we’ve received regarding our use of “non-binary” as a catch-all: that it erroneously tilts the perception of non-binary people in a feminine direction.

In a continuing effort to support diversity and inclusivity, we’re changing the language of our ARTEMIS RISING call. Non-binary authors who identify at any time/to any degree as women are welcome to submit. Your gender is for you to determine, and we support you and take you at your word. If you feel you have a story that helps cast light on the multitudinal existence that is womanness, please don’t self-reject.

Please note we’re talking about author identity here, not pen names. We fully respect the right of authors to use whatever pen names they like. However, as we note in our Legalese, we require information in the submission form be accurate and truthful.

As always, we strongly encourage submissions from people of backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented or excluded from traditional speculative 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 fiction that reflects the diversity of the human race, so we strongly encourage submissions from these and any other under-represented groups.

What to Submit

Send in your best speculative fiction between 1,500–6,000 words. Original fiction as well as reprints are welcome this year. Payment will be USD $0.06 per word for original fiction and $100 for reprints.

You can send in one submission for ARTEMIS RISING to each of our podcasts (Escape Pod for science fiction, PseudoPod for horror, PodCastle for fantasy, and Cast of Wonders for young adult), but please don’t send the same story to more than one podcast at a time.

If you have a story under consideration already in the general submissions queue, you are welcome to submit an additional story for ARTEMIS RISING. One submission per portal for a total of two under consideration.

Multiple and/or simultaneous submissions are not accepted.

While we’ll be accepting a limited number of stories for ARTEMIS RISING, all stories will also be considered as general submissions as well, in the event that we simply have too much awesome to contain in one month.

What We’re Looking For

We’re living in times that send people scrambling for the nearest wardrobe door. Dark times. The sort of times that make you want to curl up in a chair with a blanket, some noise-canceling headphones, and a great story; the sort of times that draw us to protagonists who, despite living in hard times themselves, have the power to do something.

This year, we want stories that tap into the zeitgeist’s current existential anxiety and focus on overcoming it in unconventional ways. That can be a quiet, understated story where the protagonist faces a personal crisis or a sprawling epic where literally everything is on the line.

Regardless of scale, we want stories with:

  • Protagonists who have agency over the plot
  • While confronting complex, insurmountable antagonistic forces
  • To earn a hopeful resolution

We’d like to see characters with nuance and stories with endings that leave us with a glimmer of hope, no matter how faint. We want protagonists who know when to reach out and when to fight. (Magical empathy powers are a bonus.) Remember that not every conflict is settled with violence and rarely are victories absolute.

Stories we love:

  • “A Whisper in the Weld” by Alix E. Harrow (Shimmer (and podcast by us Here!)
  • “The Glow-in-the-Dark Girls” by Senaa Ahmad (Strange Horizons)
  • “And The” by Alyc Helms (Daily Science Fiction)
  • “Odonata At Rest” by Nancy Au (Liminal Stories)
  • “Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny)
  • Silence by Shūsaku Endō
  • The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
  • Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya
  • The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (and the film of the same name)
  • Princess Mononoke (film)
  • Daredevil (TV Series)
  • The 100 (TV Series)
  • Steven Universe (TV series)

We’re open to all Fantasy subgenres, but some subgenres and story elements we especially hope to see in AR 2019 submissions follow (feel free to mix-and-match!):

  • Magical girls
  • Crisis of faith
  • Superheroes
  • Queer characters
  • Film noir
  • Found families
  • Liminal fantasy
  • Love (romantic, platonic, familial)
  • Mannerpunk
  • Unreliable narrators
  • Beautiful, experimental prose
  • Redemption or reconciliation
  • Femme characters

Hard Sells:

  • Pointless suffering/unfulfilling endings
  • Fables, myths, and fairy tales that are part of the Western canon  
  • Deals with a literal demon/devil
  • Grimdark or noblebright
  • Mustache-twirlingly evil antagonists
  • Fridged characters

How to Submit

Start writing now! A special ARTEMIS RISING Submittable portal will open September 1. Submissions will be open for the month of September 2018. Stories will air in March 2019.

Thanks, and we look forward to reading your stories!

 

Krystal Claxton and Elora Gatts

PodCastle ARTEMIS RISING 5 Guest Hosts

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PodCastle 535: The Threadbare Magician — Part 1

Originally published in Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:12 — 47.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS

Show Notes

Note that this is one part of a two-part episode. The second part will release on Tuesday, August 21, 2018.

Rated R, for cursing wizards and magical desires.

See below for links to Cat’s projects:

Cat’s Patreon.

The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers live and on-demand classes aimed at fantasy and science fiction writers. Fun fact: co-editors Khaalidah and Jen met at one of Cat’s workshops. They are highly recommended!

Some books and collections for sale: Hearts of Tabat, Neither Here Nor There, Moving from Idea to Finished Draft.

The Threadbare Magician

by Cat Rambo

Old fabric holds smells better than the cloth of more recent decades. New stuff is all chemicals. It rubs the roof of your mouth like steel wool if you sniff too hard, bites like a spell’s sting.

Older silks, wools, cottons — the organics — hold household odors. Cedar and cinnamon, turmeric and garlic. Perfumes you can no longer find, like L’Origan or Quelques Fleurs. Camphorated moth balls or talcum powder. Rarely the whiff of a person, a smell lingering long after every other scrap of their DNA has vanished from this earth.

Most often just the lilac assault left by a hasty dry-clean. But the other times make it worth it.

I pulled the green XL circle aside with my thumb and kept going widdershins, into the Ls. So far the Value Village’s rack had yielded only two possibilities: an XXL black with a bamboo-patterned weave, cream-colored dragons curled and coiled amid sun-ridden clouds and an XL crimson rayon whose flame-pattern suited it to throw-away magic. A protective cloak perfect for next week’s trip to Portland.

I fingered through the fabrics, searching for silk among the rayon and cotton. Nope, nope, nope. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 534: The Lamentation of Their Women

This story was originally published by TOR.com.

Content warning: graphic violence and mature content

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:12:13 — 52.9MB)

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Show Notes

Rated X for sex, drug use, graphic depictions of violence with blood and gore and all it’s wet and slippery trappings, and general horror.

The Lamentation of Their Women

by Kai Ashante Wilson

pre.

“Hello,” answered some whiteman. “Good morning! Could I speak with—?” He mispronounced her last name and didn’t abbreviate her first, as nobody who knew her would do.

“Who dis?” she repeated. “And what you calling about?”

“Young lady,” he said. “Can you please tell me whether Miss Jean-Louis is there or not. Will you just do that for me?” His tone all floured with whitepeople siddity, pan-fried in condescension.

But she could sit here and act dumb too. “Mmm . . . it’s hard to say. She be in and out, you know? Tell me who calling and what for and I’ll go check.”

Apparently, the man was Mr Blah D. Blah from the city agency that cleaned out Section 8 apartments when the leaseholder dropped dead. Guess whose evil Aunt Esther had died of a heart attack last Thursday on the B15 bus? And guess who was the last living Jean-Louis anywhere? (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 533: The Choking Kind

First published in Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:40 — 43.3MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13, for the donning of gory suits.

An old man sat behind the dilapidated counter of the country store humming Negro spirituals as Grace walked in, sweaty from standing in the sun. Her new black dress clung to her like a frightened child and she plucked at its neckline with irritation.

“Sun hot for all that there, enny?” He put down his newspaper, folded to the obituary page and nodded at her ensemble. She smiled at his words, the singsong of her native Gullah reaching her ears for the first time in almost a decade. English peppered with African dialects made a steamy fusion of language rich with chewy rhythms. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle Has Been Nominated for the World Fantasy Award!

The finalists for the 2018 World Fantasy Awards have been announced, and PodCastle has been nominated! Co-editors Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali and Jen R Albert are finalists in the Special Award – Non-Professional category for their work on the podcast.

Nominations were sourced from members of the current year’s convention, as well as attendees from the previous two years and a panel of judges. This year’s award judges are David Anthony Durham, Christopher Golden, Juliet E. McKenna, Charles Vess, and Kaaron Warren.

The winners of the 2018 World Fantasy Awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, November 1-4, 2018 in Baltimore, Maryland.

The nominee list is bursting with incredible talent in every category, and we consider ourselves honored to appear alongside them. Jen and Khaalidah would like to extend their deep gratitude to PodCastle’s wonderful listeners, to the Escape Artists group of podcasts, and to the entire PodCastle team, past and present, who work tirelessly to bring you the best of fantasy fiction every week.

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PodCastle 532: Vetala

Previously published in the anthology Those Who Make Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories.

Content Warning: domestic violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:26 — 33.9MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R for brutal visions.

The night I was to leave Delhi for Toronto, my grandmother told me I was making a big mistake.

“The vetala is going to follow you,” she said, as I stuffed my clothes higgledy-piggledy into the shiny new suitcase I had bought for my shiny new life. “Think of how lonely it will be.”

I slammed down the lid of my suitcase. “There are demons everywhere,” I said. “Even Toronto.”

My grandmother sniffed. “Not our kind.”

“How would you know?” I countered. “You hardly ever leave home.”

She looked at me out of her sharp, blackbird eyes. “And you hardly ever stay here. What are you looking for, Pooja?”

“A good job,” I said flatly. We had been over this many times in the last four months, ever since I’d gotten an offer to work for Recreated Realms, the biggest Timescape company in Canada. “Money. Peace. Security.” Freedom.

“None of which you will find until you stop running away,” said my grandmother. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 531: The Island of the Nine Whirlpools

From Edith Nesbit’s classic collection The Book of Dragons, which is in the public domain. You can find the whole thing here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:00 — 34.4MB)

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The Island of the Nine Whirlpools

by Edith Nesbit

The dark arch that led to the witch’s cave was hung with a black-and-yellow fringe of live snakes. As the Queen went in, keeping carefully in the middle of the arch, all the snakes lifted their wicked, flat heads and stared at her with their wicked, yellow eyes. You know it is not good manners to stare, even at Royalty, except of course for cats. And the snakes had been so badly brought up that they even put their tongues out at the poor lady. Nasty, thin, sharp tongues they were too.

Now, the Queen’s husband was, of course, the King. And besides being a King he was an enchanter, and considered to be quite at the top of his profession, so he was very wise, and he knew that when Kings and Queens want children, the Queen always goes to see a witch. So he gave the Queen the witch’s address, and the Queen called on her, though she was very frightened and did not like it at all. The witch was sitting by a fire of sticks, stirring something bubbly in a shiny copper cauldron. (Continue Reading…)