Magazines and More Freebies

Several great stories to start the weekend.  There's just so many good ones, I don't know which to highlight. Let's just say I highlighted them all.  Horror fans should look to the audio section where three great podcasts have horror stories listed today. 


[Art from "The Trickster's Bones" listed below.]





Fiction
At Anotherealm: "The Harder They Fall" by Erin Smith. Speculative Fiction.
     "There was no roar of the crowd; many of them sat with bored looks on their faces. There was an occasional scream. They were screaming,"

At Buzzy Mag: "The Trickster’s Bones" by Kenneth Kao. Urban Fantasy.
     "We had many adventures over those summer months.  I, with the metal detector Dad gave me for my eighth birthday, and Darwin with his big digging claws that could tear through earth better than even a grown-up with a shovel."

At The Colored Lens: "The Roller Coaster" by Justin Key. Speculative Fiction.
     "No Country Club for Old Men was built at the bottom of a small mountain, much like everything else in Martinsville, Virginia. The town had more hills than convenience stores and the one leading up to Bob Woods’ country club was particularly steep."

At Cosmos:  "Reading By Numbers" by Aidan Doyle. Speculative Fiction.
      "28 – The end came when I saw a documentary about an autistic savant who could perform astonishing feats of calculation and memory. He recited pi from memory to 22,514 digits. I could not do this."

At Daily Science Fiction: "A Handful of Glass, a Sky without Stars" by Damien Walters Grintalis.
      "Mia held her wrist up to the security panel outside the pharmaceutical club and waited while her identification and prescription were verified. A light on the panel flashed twice. The airlock doors opened."

At Nature: "Midnight in the Cathedral of Time" by Preston Grassmann. Science Fiction.
       "The man I'm searching for sits in the corner of the tent and looks up slowly. His eyes catch a glint of light from mechanically modified plasma-eels that swim in a tank at the entrance of his shop. As I enter, he smiles and hunches slowly forward, a conspirator waiting to whisper a secret." 

At Interstellar Fiction:

"On the Night Shift" by M. Bennardo. Science Fiction.
      "Three months into the night shift, things were just as quiet as could be. Dale and I were rotating eight-hour stints babysitting the ship, but it had been weeks since we’d heard so much as a peep anywhere in the place"
"Robot Blues, Alien Brews" by D. Ahren Bell. Science Fiction.
     "…<>"
 "Jury of Peers" by Hunter Liguore. Science Fiction.
     "As the premier delegate called the court to order, the jurors hurried to their booths. Five hundred jury members in all, the same number that made up the entire community, less the children."
"Brooding in the Dark" by Philip Edward Kaldon. Science Fiction.
       "Three months into the night shift, things were just as quiet as could be. Dale and I were rotating eight-hour stints babysitting the ship, but it had been weeks since we’d heard so much as a peep anywhere in the place."
"Out With the Crowd" by Michael Haynes. Science Fiction.
      "Alex Choo, pitcher of the Des Moines Sting, consulted his neural boost as Jordan Smith walked to the plate in the top of the seventh inning of game seven of the World Series."

Now Posted: Scifaikuest Vol.10 No. 2 Speculative Japanese poetry forms.

Now Posted Cafe Irreal #44. Surreal Fantasy.

• Three Sponge Baths by Christopher Prewitt
• The Horse Factory by Michael Paul Workman
• Cynosure by Paul Blaney
• New Donald Moffit Prose Poem (inc. footnotes) by Patrick Cosgrove
• Leaves the City in Silence by James Bambury

Audio
At Cast of Wonders:  "Once There Was A Hero…" by Jenny Moore. YA Fantasy.
     "The demon had come this way not long ago. The grass still smoked from its passing and the stench of rotten eggs hung heavy on the air.Kern of Thornrath stared at the mountains ahead and flexed his jaw muscles—"

At The Classic Tales Podcast: "The Empty House" by Algernon Blackwood. Horror.
     "Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particular feature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and an ingenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with their being: that they are evil."

At Pseudopod: "Night Fishing" by Ray Cluley. Horror.
     "Statistics varied. One jumped every two weeks or thirty jumped per year, and Terrence had read somewhere else that every month saw as many as five people drop to their deaths."

At Tales to Terrify: "The Secret in the House of Smiles" by Paul Jessop. Horror.
     "Jack cut up pictures of girls with thin razors and then glued the most pleasing body parts together onto a single white sheet of paper."

Old Time Radio
At OTR Plot Spot:  "'An Evening's Entertainment" - The Black Mass (1964) and - "Metzengerstein" by Poe - Columbia Workshop (1937) . Horror.

Other Genres

• Audio at LibriVox: The Poisoned Pen by Arthur B. Reeve. Mystery.
• Audio at The New Yorker:  "Roy Spivey" by Miranda July.
• Fiction at The Western Online: "Bloodhound" by Amanda Foti. Western.