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Announcements

Greetings good people,

It is only August and we can definitively say that PodCastle has had a fantastic year in more ways than one.

We ran our third Artemis Rising in March, and showcased some of the best stories by women and non-binary authors. We had our first Eid Special with a fantastic story by Saladin Ahmed. We have added on a bright bunch of new staff. We became a SFWA-qualifying pro rate publication, and we have had a record number of submissions from some very talented writers.

Save for a couple of dates, we’ve also pretty much filled our lineup of stories for the remainder of the year. Because of this, we will be keeping general submissions closed until October. This does not include two specific open calls.

  1. August 13th through 19th we will open submissions for our Halloween special. If you have a story that you think fits, or something you’ve been ruminating over, get to work and send it to us.
  2. Submissions for our fourth Artemis Rising, slated to run March of next year, will be open during the month of September. Artemis Rising 4 will be edited by our magnificent and much beloved assistant editor Setsu Uzume.

Lastly, don’t forget to head on over to the forums to follow the voting for our Flash Fiction IV Contest.

Jen Albert and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, co-editors PodCastle

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PodCastle 481: What the Fires Burn

PodCastle 481: What the Fires Burn is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes

Rated R

What the Fires Burn

by A. Merc Rustad

It’s near dusk when VanDrake Tage Rannheim trudges into the city to meet a friend. He sticks to the lee of buildings, smog and shadow wrapping his coat. Don’t like a lot of attention. Can’t help it, mostly, but he keeps his greatcoat pulled closed to conceal weapons. Ain’t wiped the mud off the back sigil, either.

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PodCastle 480: All of the Cuddles With None of the Pain

PodCastle 480: All of the Cuddles With None of the Pain is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes

Rated PG

All of the Cuddles With None of the Pain

By J. J. Roth

What is a Reborn?

A Reborn is an artist-enhanced baby doll that looks and feels lifelike. Artists create Reborns as one-of-a-kind collectibles, often from ordinary play dolls transformed into art suitable for hands-off display—or hands-on cuddling.

While reasonably durable, Reborns are not children’s toys. Rough play may damage them.

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PodCastle Miniature 99: Ghost of the Shoals

Spirits Tincturek, June 2016

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Show Notes

Rated R

Ghost of the Shoals

By Sandra M. Odell

Pharah Dupree always wore her hair up tight.

“You ever hear of Muscle Shoals, Manny?” she said one afternoon. We sat on the back porch steps of Rock Bottom Studios, her with a cigarette, me with a longneck Bud, thinking about how good it’d feel if she smiled my way. “Some of the best music in the world came out of Muscle Shoals, all the big names. Aretha, Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Wilson Pickett, Bob Dylan, Percy Sledge.”

The sun beat the sweat out of me and cut dusty shadows through the trees around the edge of the gravel parking lot. “Yeah. They say the Tennessee River’s what makes the Muscle Shoals sound.”

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PodCastle 479: Dragon Girl

First published in The Never Never Land.

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Show Notes

Rated R

Dragon Girl

By Cat Sparks

I fell in love with a dragon boy when I was seventeen. The dragon train—five creatures long—camped near Grimpiper in the days before it crossed the Great Divide. Beyond the stones lay the Dead Red Heart. Our ’stead nestled in amongst the shadow dunes. Close enough to the Sand Road, not too close to its bandits and its warlords.

We’d been pushing our water wheels across miles of stone when the kite went up. Blue tail flags might mean many things but this time blue meant drag­ons. We dropped the wheels and ran up Puckers Ridge. Right to the top and there they were, five dragons chewing through wild melon fields below. Thick-set creatures, bellies low to the ground.

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PodCastle 478: A Ghost Among The Mangroves

PodCastle 478: A Ghost Among The Mangroves is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13

A Ghost Among the Mangroves

By Naru Sundar

They must have executed me while I waited in the mangrove shadows. Here, amidst the cicada trill, amidst the basso rumble of distant ships in the Trincomalee harbor. The Seiko at my feet, my brother Vasanthan’s parting gift, lies broken. Its broken hands mark my passage into this juddering, flickering, solitary awareness.  I am but one ghost, with not even Vasanthan for company, no matter how much I want him to be here.  But how can that be? Sri Lanka must throng with ghosts, hundreds and thousands of them, monsters and innocent both.

And which am I?

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PC 477: Crickets Sing for Naomi

PC 477: Crickets Sing for Naomi is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13

Crickets Sing for Naomi

By Eden Royce

“If these danggone crickets don’t stop following me,” Naomi grumbled as the insect bounded out of the path of her wedge heel. Another of the bugs scuttled across the top of her foot, its spiny legs pricking her exposed skin. Under the streetlight, moths danced in the circle of brightness on the otherwise dim road. Heat ebbed from the asphalt, making her wish she’d worn flip-flops.

For months, the insects had followed her around. At her parents’ house, one had even jumped out of  her pocketbook onto the hardwood floor. While her mother screamed and leapt onto a chair, her father had chuckled, scooped up the invader, and placed it outside.

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Artemis Rising 4

During the month of September, PodCastle will be looking for submissions to celebrate ARTEMIS RISING, a special month-long event across the Escape Artists podcasts featuring stories by women and nonbinary authors in genre fiction.

Stepping in as guest editor for our fourth annual ARTEMIS RISING event is PodCastle assistant editor Setsu Uzume!

Summary

  • Payment at $0.06 per word. Please see our general submission guidelines for details of the rights we purchase and our sample contracts.
  • Original stories only.
  • Word count: 2000 – 6000 words.
  • Submit using Standard Manuscript Format. We accept files in .odt, .rtf, .docx or .doc format (no PDFs).
  • No multiple submissions.
  • No simultaneous submissions.
  • Submission window runs September 1-30, 2017.

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, LGBTQIA 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 2000 – 6000 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.

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. 

ARTEMIS RISING Q&A

  • Q: If a story has been rejected by PodCastle in the past, can I submit it to PodCastle AR?
  • A: No.
  • Q: If a story has multiple authors, do they all have to meet the AR criteria?
  • A: Yes.
  • Q: If I’ve already submitted an AR story, can I submit another I wrote with a co-author to the same podcast’s AR?
  • A: No.
  • Q: If I have a story on submission to a podcast, can I submit a different story to that podcast’s AR while the first one is still in the queue? Or vice versa?
  • A: Yes.
  • Q: Can I submit a rejected AR story to the same podcast’s non-AR submissions pile?
  • A: No, because AR editors may refer your story to the show’s regular editors at their discretion. Otherwise please take a rejection as a rejection of the story from the venue for all purposes.

 

Thanks, and we look forward to reading your stories!

Jen R Albert, Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, and Setsu Uzume, PodCastle Senior Editors

 

 

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PodCastle 476: Clay and Smokeless Fire

Originally published in Slate Magazine.

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Show Notes

Welcome to PodCastle’s first Eid issue!

Rated PG-13

Clay and Smokeless Fire

By Saladin Ahmed

Qumqam stood upside-down atop a cell phone tower, twirling at its pinnacle on his fingertip. When the humans had first started to besmirch the earth with the things, Qumqam had thought them hideous. But he’d come to love dancing on them the way he’d once loved dancing on ziggurats.

Well, he’d come to like it, anyway. Qumqam didn’t know if there was anything left in this lower world that he loved, but sometimes when he leapt among the towers and turbines of America he felt something like happiness again. For a moment or two, at least.

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PC 475: The Dauphin’s Metaphysics

First published in Unlikely Story

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13.

The Dauphin’s Metaphysics

by Eric Schwitzgebel

“—which suggests possible applications, if the cobbler is much younger.  Don’t you think, Miss Professor?”

The Dauphin sat twelve rows back—teenage heir apparent to the throne, playing at Academy student—smug smile, a ring of vacant seats around him, his speech casually slurred, ostentatiously humble with plain quill and standard-issue student gown (expensively pressed).

I intended my gaze to crucify him.  Softness to students is a graybeard luxury; a young woman can only be hard.  All the more so, I was sure, in this particular case.  I nursed silence to the edge of discomfort, coiling the spring.  “It is a thought experiment that depends on immaterial souls transferred by miracle,” I said.  “There can be no practical applications.”  I paused again, as if gathering my thoughts.  “Or do you perhaps mistake yourself for God?”

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