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PodCastle 512, ARTEMIS RISING: Scar Clan

PodCastle 512, ARTEMIS RISING: Scar Clan is a PodCastle original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:37 — 33.4MB)

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Show Notes

PG-13, for graphic monster gore.

Find this year’s glorious ARTEMIS RISING art by Geneva Benton on her website here. Additional ARTEMIS RISING 4 swag is available on Redbubble and Teepublic.

 

Host Notes:
“Forgetting by Commemoration, or, the Disrespect of Respect,” by China Mieville

“They Should Be Afraid of Old Women” by Mary Anne Mohanraj

Scar Clan

by Carrow Narby

Sage doesn’t ask me to go with her when the call comes in. She doesn’t say anything at all except, “It’s Thunderhead again.” She ducks into coveralls, tosses some shovels into the bucket truck, and speeds away. We call it the “bucket” because of how we use it. It’s not one of those trucks with a boom on it that they use to fix the power lines. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 511: The Fumblers Alley Risk Emporium

Previously published by Urban Fantasy Magazine (December 2014).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:07 — 24.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG.

Desperation was the worst thing you could bring to the Emporium, but there was nowhere else to go. The Emporium was the only place that would have what I was looking for. It always had what I was looking for. So I brought my desperation with me, like an albatross around my neck, like a black spot.

You could get it all at the Emporium. But not for money; Mr. Handlesropes didn’t operate that way. Sometimes, one of the art addicts who dealt in the alley would come in and offer huge sums of stolen cash for one of his items — a piece of cured human skin bearing a rare tattoo, or the shell of a dodo egg hand-painted by a prisoner on the day before his execution — but Mr. Handlesropes would just laugh.

(Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 510: My Heart is a Prayer

Previously published by Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.

Content warning for the death of a child.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:52 — 21.1MB)

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They make my heart out of stone. A slate-colored hunk of granite run through with thin veins of fool’s gold like silver cracks that the father found in the mountains outside of town. He had been gathering lackweed to chew, so that he could make himself numb, and could fall asleep in the meadows, in nests of dry grass like a bird. The afternoon sun burned his skin, and he felt almost as if the light were passing through him. He felt like a window. Like a single pane of a glass.

He couldn’t sleep at home anymore. The old feather bed was too soft. The mother slept turned away from him, and the curve of her neck, in the blue moonlight, looked to him like a hooked knife. The silence there had a body and a mouth, and he could feel, always, its teeth against his neck. Silence was a vampire.

(Continue Reading…)

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The Best of PodCastle: Vote for Your Favorite Episodes!

Nominations are closed, and the final ballot is revealed! We’re now asking fans and frequent listeners of the podcast to vote for their favorite episodes from the ballot in the link below. The top five PodCastle episodes, as voted by fans, will be featured in a special later this year!

You can find the survey here. Vote now!

All the episodes in the final ballot are linked below for your listening pleasure.

Episode 1: “Come Lady Death” by Peter S. Beagle
Episode 20: “Cup and Table” by Tim Pratt
Episode 51: “The Cambist and Lord Iron” by Daniel Abraham
Episode 88: “Another End of the Empire” by Tim Pratt
Episode 92: “Sir Hereward and Mr. Fitz Go to War Again” by Garth Nix
Episode 93: “The Mermaid’s Tea Party” by Samantha Henderson
Episode 136: “The Christmas Mummy” by Heather Shaw & Tim Pratt
Episode 147: “Card Sharp” by Rajan Khanna
Episode 154: “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Under the Still Waters” by N.K. Jemisin
Episode 165: “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu
Episode 186: “Beyond the Sea Gate of the Scholar Pirates of Sarskoe” by Garth Nix
Episode 200: “In the Stacks” by Scott Lynch
Episode 211: “The Axiom of Choice” by David W. Goldman
Episode 214: “We Never Talk About My Brother” by Peter S. Beagle
Episode 254: “Sundae” by Matt Wallace
Episode 324: “Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy” by Saladin Ahmed
Episode 336: “Why I Bought Satan Two Cokes on the Day I Graduated High School” by Nathaniel Lee
Episode 345: “Makeisha in Time” by Rachael K. Jones
Episode 354: “The Sea of Wives” by Nathaniel Lee
Episode 356: “Super-Baby-Moms Group Saves the Day” by Tina Connolly
Episode 385: “Where Monsters Dance” by A. Merc Rustad
Episode 405: “Beat Softly My Wings of Steel” by Beth Cato
Episode 409: “The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado
Episode 413: “This is Not A Wardrobe Door” by A. Merc Rustad
Episode 427: “Squalor and Sympathy” by Matt Dovey
Episode 438: “Defy the Grey Kings” by Jason Fischer
Episode 458: “Home is a House that Loves You” by Rachael K. Jones
Episode 467: “How I Became Coruscating Queen of All the Realms, Pierced the Obsidian Night, Destroyed a Legendary Sword, and Saved My Heart’s True Love” by Baker & Dovey
Episode 487: “A Whisper in the Weld” by Alix E. Harrow
Episode 490: “The Names of the Sky” by Matthew Claxton
Episode 501: “The Christmas Abomination from Beyond the Back of the Stars” by Heather Shaw & Tim Pratt
Episode 506: “La Gorda and the City of Silver” by Sabrina Vourvoulias

Have questions? Please email editor@podcastle.org.

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PodCastle 509: A Non-Hero’s Guide to The Road of Monsters

Previously published in Mothership Zeta.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:48 — 32.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG for Mild Language and Bold Monsters.

A Non-Hero’s Guide to The Road of Monsters

By A.T. Greenblatt

1. The Siren

There are three basic guidelines that any idiot can follow when faced with a shape-shifting Siren hell bent on drowning you. One: Plug your ears and sit tight. She’ll tire eventually. Two: If easily visually swayed, use a blindfold. Three: Don’t be a hero.

Which around here is like telling people not to breathe.

The Siren guarding the bridge at the end of the road is a beauty in the classic sense and she’s relentless with all those brave, brave heroes attempting to cross the river. From the way her lips linger over syllables, I can tell she’s singing some slow, breathy song and between the lulls in victims, she brushes her radiant hair with a flimsy dollar-store brush and glares at me, challenging me to approach.

(Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 508: The Ravens’ Sister

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:30 — 25.6MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13, for war and all its wounds and sorrow.

The Ravens’ Sister

by Natalia Theodoridou

There are many ways to tell this story.

All of them are true.

(Continue Reading…)

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The Best of PodCastle: Nominate Your Favorite Episodes!

PodCastle wants you to nominate your favs! We’re asking fans and frequent listeners of the podcast to fill out the very quick survey (linked below). In the form, please list up to five of your favorite-ever PodCastle episodes. These nominations will be used to create a “Best of PodCastle” ballot so everyone can vote for their favorites in the final round, starting on February 14th. The top five PodCastle episodes, as voted by fans, will be featured in a special later this year!

You can find the survey here. Nominations will close at 11:59 p.m. PST on February 13. What are you waiting for? Get nominating!

Have questions? Please email editor@podcastle.org.

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PodCastle 507: The Rocket Farmer

Previous published in Interzone 271.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:06 — 41.8MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13. Take cover: contains more than 5 F-bombs.

Sarnai

I sit at my kitchen table and watch as my soon-to-be ex-husband, David, assembles cardboard boxes and labels each one in neat block letters. This is David’s third packing weekend and once again our daughter has made herself scarce; Sophie has no problem with late-at-night drunk mom or lonely stoned dad, but watching us sort through the flotsam of our former marriage — it’s too much.

“What’s up with those burn marks on the driveway?” David says. “I can set up the fire pit if you want.”

(Continue Reading…)

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For Your Consideration: PodCastle Award Eligibility 2017

PodCastle wants to thank all of our listeners and fans for a wonderful 2017. We’re so proud of everything we accomplished throughout the year, from the astounding amount of original fiction we put forth to the addition of some fabulous new staff to our first nomination and win of a major podcasting award. Below is a list of our award-eligible stories from 2017. Also note that PodCastle itself is eligible in the semiprozine category of the Hugos.

The stories:

 

Here’s to all our listeners, authors, narrators, and contributors; we are so grateful for all your enthusiasm and support. Wishing you all a happy 2018!

 

Jen R Albert and Khaalidah Muhammed-Ali, co-editors, Setsu Uzume, assistant editor, and the PodCastle team

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PodCastle 506: La Gorda and the City of Silver

Fat Girl in a Strange Land.

Contains nondescriptive references to sexual abuse.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:13 — 23.4MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13 for noble luchadores and kickass luchadoras.

La Gorda and the City of Silver

by Sabrina Vourvoulias

I.

I was born on a Wednesday, in the middle of a chapuzón.

The sudden squall of sky water bears little resemblance to a thunderstorm — it’s more like a vertical flood, though very brief.

I considered Chapuzón for my luchador name — I had poured out of my mother with the same fulminating relentlessness and washed her into the hereafter — but fate took a hand, and the name is still available to anyone who wants to design its mask and come up with some signature moves.

(Continue Reading…)