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PodCastle 432: The Beautiful Bird Sits No Longer Singing in the Nest

PodCastle 432: The Beautiful Bird Sits No Longer Singing in the Nest is a PodCastle original.

Disturbing imagery

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Show Notes

Rated R for adult content, disturbing imagery.

The Beautiful Bird Sits No Longer Singing in the Nest

by Kate Lechler

The hair-pulling is a habit recently acquired. I do it only when I’m alone, after Grace has left for the evening. I roll each hair between my fingers like a rosary. My fingers crawl across my scalp until I find one: coarse where the others are thin, kinked where the others are smooth. I enjoy the feel of it pulling against me, tenting my skin. Then I yank it out, suck on the end, and drop it on the floor. The area around my bed is littered with black straw.

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PodCastle Is Open to Submissions for Artemis Rising 3!

artemis-rising-2-image-only-2016-prints

PodCastle is now OPEN 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.

Head on over to our special ARTEMIS RISING Submittable portal for more details. The portal will be open for the month of September.

All Escape Artists podcasts are currently accepting submissions for ARTEMIS RISING, so be sure to check out Escape Pod for science fiction, Pseudopod for horror, and Cast of Wonders for YA.

Thanks, and we look forward to reading your stories!

 

Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, Guest Editor

And the PodCastle team

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PodCastle 431: La Héron

Originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction.

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13.

La Héron

by Charlotte Ashley

In the grayest hour of the evening of April 16th, 1699, when the sun had just vanished behind the great château that embraced the city of Caen but before her lantern-bearers had taken up the hooks of their trade, a gargantuan woman stooped to fit through the door of the Trois Tours Inn. Her inconvenience did not end at the door. Her steeple-crown hat, two centuries out of fashion, bumped the inn’s rafters and fell askew, causing her to swear and slouch as she made her way toward the crowd clustered at the foot of the stairs. Like the other travelers there, she was road-worn and unkempt, blonde hair so filthy that it looked green in the moonlight, spilling like seaweed out of her pointed cap. But so great was the force of her presence that the lesser persons ahead of her moved aside at her approach, clearing the path to the front of the queue where a registrar sat at a table, poised over a long ledger. His pen shook as it hovered over the lists.

“Name?”

“La Héron.”

“Weapon?”

“Rapier.”

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EP198a: Eugie Award Re-Post of Urchins, While Swimming

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Picture of Eugie FosterEscape Artists would like to draw your attention to a fantastic event happening next week at DragonCon, the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction.

This annual award will be presented for the first time in 2016—for works published in 2015.

The Eugie Award honors stories that are irreplaceable, that inspire, enlighten, and entertain. It will shine the spotlight on stories that are beautiful, thoughtful, and passionate. That change us and the field. The recipient will be a story that is unique and will become essential to speculative fiction readers.

The finalists for this year’s award are:

  • “The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsin Muir
  • “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong
  • “The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” by Catherynne M. Valente
  • “Pocosin” by Ursula Vernon
  • “Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight” by Aliette De Bodard

To highlight the work of these authors we are re-running three stories on Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Pseudopod:

Escape Pod 408: Immersion by Aliette De Bodard

Podcastle 198: Urchins, While Swimming by Catherynne M. Valente

Pseudopod 492: The Fisher Queen by Alyssa Wong

Also, be sure to check out Ursula Vernon’s story “Jackalope Wives” available to read for free at Mothership Zeta. And mark November on your calendar for an upcoming story by Tamsin Muir.

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Ms Foster has been featured as an author and a narrator on nearly all of the Escape Artists podcasts. We encourage you to revisit them all.

Escape Pod

Escape Pod 17: The Life and Times of Penguin

Escape Pod 39: My Friend is a Lesbian Zombie

Escape Pod 121: The Snow Woman’s Daughter

Escape Pod 214: Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast

Escape Pod 229: Littleblossom Makes a Deal With the Devil

Escape Pod 261: Only Springtime When She’s Gone

Escape Pod 388: Trixie and the Pandas of Dread

Pseudopod

PseudoPod 091: Caesar’s Ghost

PseudoPod 137: The Reign of the Wintergod

Pseudopod 265: Biba Jibun

PseudoPod 343: Magdala Amygdala

PodCastle

PC028: The Tanuki-Kettle

PodCastle 63: Daughter of Botu

PodCastle 105: Honored Guest

PodCastle 184: Black Swan, White Swan

PodCastle Miniature 45: When Shakko Did Not Lie

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PodCastle Miniature 89: Lapis Lazuli

This story originally appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

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Show Notes

PG-13

by Tania Fordwalker

read by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

 

In Sesara, only the rich wear bright colours. My knight shines in the armour I buff for him nightly, glossy as a jewel. My clothes and skin are the colours of the earth. We stand together with two days of desert at our backs and a forest of black thorns before us. My heart is a bird in my chest.

I was twelve when the slave traders came from the ocean and stole me away. To the Sesarans we Arn all look the same. I was always tall and strong. An unscrupulous trader shaved my head and sold me as a boy to fetch a higher price, and I live as a boy still, because it is better than what waits for me as an Arn girl in this country.

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PodCastle 430: Thundergod in Therapy

Originally published in Galaxy’s Edge, Jan 1, 2016.

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Show Notes

Rated R (for language).

Thundergod in Therapy

by Effie Seiberg

Zeus sat on his shitty beige sofa in his shitty beige condo in his shitty beige retirement community. This was what the Court-appointed therapist had recommended—to think of this parole as a fresh start, and to enjoy retirement on Earth. Everything around him was fucking beige except for the fake plant from Ikea, which was a mocking shade of unnatural green. He could imagine the smug grin his judge would have if she’d seen this—

But no, he would give this a fair try. He’d promised Dr. Brinkman (formerly Terminus, the Roman god of boundaries) that he would.

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PodCastle 429: Wolfy Things

PodCastle 429: Wolfy Things is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes

Rated R.

Wolfy Things

by Erin Roberts

 

Tonight, me and Lee gonna kill the wolf. Been digging a pit out in the woods all summer, filling it up with wolfsbane and sharp rocks big as our heads, covering it up with leaves so wolfy eyes can’t tell it’s there. Lee even snatched a whole chicken outta his Pa’s coop, snapped its neck and threw it on the pile like some kinda wolf Christmas come early. Wolf just has to go sniffing over by the edge and we give a good push and we’ll be Nicky and Lee, honest-to-God wolf-killers.

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Artemis Rising 3

Artemis Rising 2

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 third annual ARTEMIS RISING event is PodCastle assistant editor Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali!

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, 2016.

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.

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. 

Thanks, and we look forward to reading your stories!

 

Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, Guest Editor

And the PodCastle team

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PodCastle 428: Madame Félidé Elopes

PodCastle 428: Madame Félidé Elopes is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes

Rated PG

This story was written for a contest, and was based on an original painting by Yekaterina Yeliseeva.

This is this story’s first English publication. Click here to find the original story in Russian.

Madame Félidé Elopes

by K. A. Teryna translated by Anatoly Belilovsky

1.  Madame Félidé and the Smile Merchants

On Friday Madame Félidé bought all the smiles the local merchants had for sale. Merry and sad, shy and modest, childlike and old, tender, happy, polite, ugly, warm, soft, villainous, ironic, open, timid, grudging, obsequious—every single one. Shopkeepers dug through their deepest cellars to find silly grins that rarely sold and usually gathered dust amid bits of obsolete gossip and jokes peeled off the floor after they had fallen flat. She emptied the display cases of fleeting smiles and gullible smiles and especially made sure to acquire every single sincere smile in the entire town. She also bought two ounces of contagious laughter and half a pound of good cheer. For change, the sales clerk gave her a tulle sachet full of pointed double entendres.

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PodCastle 427: Squalor and Sympathy

First published in Writers of the Future volume 32, May 2016.

 

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13

Squalor and Sympathy

by Matt Dovey

Anna concentrated on the cold, on the freezing water around her feet and the bruising sensation in her toes. So cold. So cold. So cold, she thought. A prickling warmth like pins and needles crackled inside her feet. It coursed through her body to her clenched hands and into the lead alloy handles of the cotton loom. Each thought of cold! kindled a fresh surge of heat inside and pushed the shuttle across the weave in a new burst of power. Anna’s unfocused eyes rested on the woven cotton feeding out of the back of the machine. It looks so warm.

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