It's a Beautiful Day in the Free Fiction Neighborhood.

Four more free fiction stories at Tor.com is certainly a highlight of this morning's free fiction. Project Gutenberg has a 1985 science fiction novel, there's flash fiction, including one by Gregory Benford, and audio stories at Podcast and SFFaudio.








Fiction
• At Project Gutenberg: First on the Moon by Jeff Sutton. Science Fiction. Science Fiction. 1958.
     "The four men had been scrutinized, watched, investigated, and intensively trained for more than a year. They were the best men to be found for that first, all-important flight to the Moon—the pioneer manned rocket that would give either the East or the West control over the Earth."

• At Tor.com: "Old Dead Futures" by Tina Connolly. Science Fiction.
      "a young boy’s ability to change the future makes him valuable to the government. But that same ability keeps him trapped in a wheelchair and at the mercy of those who would use him. When our present is fixed, how can we see a different future?"

• At Tor.com: "Contains Multitudes" by Ben Burgis. Science Fiction.   
      "Being a teenager is tough. Being part of the first generation of teenagers to share their body and soul with one of the aliens who just barely destroyed the earth: way tougher."

• At Tor.com: "Dragonkin" by Lavie Tidhar. Fantasy.
       "There are kin and there are –kin. There are not many dragons, but there are many who think they are, or want to be, or claim to remember being."

• At Tor.com: "One" by Nancy Kress. Science Fiction.
      "a science fiction novella about an angry young boxer who, after experiencing a concussion in a bout, is able to sense what people are thinking and predict their every move. He finds this useful in boxing but not great for personal relationships and turns to artificial means to deaden the sensations."
 
Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "The Flight Stone" by KJ Kabza. Science Fiction.
• At Every Day Fiction: "Close Encounters of the Worst Kind" by Y.N. Thom. Science Fiction.
• At Flashes in the Dark: "The Solidarity of Cows" by Reed Beebe. Horror.
• At Nature: "Think Big" by Gregory Benford. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Faceless" by Bob Newbell. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At PodCastle: "Selected Program Notes From the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer" by Kenneth Schneyer. Fantasy.
     "Most biographers agree that Latimer and Meszaros were already lovers by the time this work was completed.  Is this apparent from the composition or technique?  From the pose of the model?  As you proceed through the exhibit, note similarities and differences between this and other portrayals of Meszaros over the next 34 years."

• At SFFaudio: "Fishhead" by Irvin S. Cobb. Horror.
     "He uttered no cry, but his eyes popped out, and his mouth set in a square shape of agony"

Everything But the eKitchen Sink - All for Free

There's too much good stuff to single anything out today, but there a litlle bit of everything. All free. More tomorrow, but hopefully less.





[Art from Apex Magazine, linked below]






Fiction
• At Anotherealm: "Pushing" by Chris Barnham.
     "This night was different. Jed started in on me and I took it for a while but then he said something about never having any girlfriends. Said I needed to get home early to my mother, so she could read my bedtime story. Well, it was nothing to do with him that I still lived with Mum. Why shouldn't I? I wasn't so old. He made a rude comment about her, and my face felt hot and tight."

• At Author's Site: "After The Fall" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
     "But after a solitary walk along his isolated property’s borders results in a potentially deadly fall, he fights like hell to survive, knowing no one will come to rescue him. So, when he starts seeing things—seeing a creature he knows can’t exist—he grasps at his one chance for survival: believing in the impossible."

• At The Colored Lens: "No More Horizons – Part 1" by Adam C. Richardson. Science Fiction.
      "The soldiers called it Lake Exile. It sparkled below me like a field of glittering emeralds in the sunlight. The green mountain that loomed over us was Warden Peak, and although this planet was known on star charts as Manasseh, the soldiers called it New Alcatraz."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "The Wheel of Fortune" by Alexander Lumans. 
     "Skull: When your last breath issues out, it will be with thanks. Thanks that you are not bedridden with combat injuries or nerve damage. Thanks that you are not interrogated at dagger-point over the whereabouts of your world's supply of silicon and chromium."

• At Kasma: "The Way Home" by Gary Cuba. [via SF Signal]
     "The dog sat in the access port to the maintenance module, ears perked and tongue agog. It was a smallish, mixed breed with a pointy nose, alert eyes, and short, coarse hair painted in a pattern of brown, black and white. A tooled leather flight harness encircled its torso."

• At Lightspeed: "The Ballad of Marisol Brook" by Sarah Grey. Science Fiction.
     "Her name, this time, is Marisol Lysium Brook. The media, long bored with the minutiae of her death, occupies itself by speculating which stars will grace the guest list at her reconstruction gala"

• At Lightspeed: "Princess Lucinda and the Hound of the Moon" by Theodora Goss.
     "When the Queen learned that she could not have a child, she cried for three days. She cried in the clinic in Switzerland, on the shoulder of the doctor, an expert on women’s complaints, leaving tear stains on his white coat. She cried on the train through Austria, while the Alps slipped past the window of her compartment, their white peaks covered with snow."

• Details at SF Signal: "The Crystal Empire" by L. Neil Smith. Science Fiction.
     "Earth is ruled by three mighty empires: The Saracen-Jewish Empire led by the Caliph of Rome, the Mughal-Arab Empire, ferocious in its determination to destroy its neighbor, and the great Sino-Aztec’s Crystal Empire, led by a living God."

• At Strange Horizons: "Jinki and the Paradox" by Sathya Stone.  
     "Years of erosion, that means the wind and water broke bits off the mountain along that way," he pointed east. "And brought them down here, to be dust." / "What mountains?" / "They're gone now," said Mr. Quest. "Eroded. You can see them if you look through Time."

• At Tor.com: "The Too-Clever Fox" by Leigh Bardugo. Fantasy.   
       "In Ravka, just because you avoid one trap, it doesn't mean you’ll escape the next. This story is a companion folk tale to Leigh Bardugo’s upcoming novel, Siege and Storm, the second book in the Grisha Trilogy."

• At Weird Fiction Review: "A Night of the High Season" by Bruno Schulz.
     "Everybody knows that whimsical time, in the course of mundane and ordinary years, occasionally will bring forth from its womb other years, odd years, degenerate years, somewhere in which, like a little sixth finger upon a hand, a spurious thirteenth month sprouts up; spurious, we say, since it will seldom grow to full size. Like late begotten children, it lags behind in its development: a hunchback month, a half-wilted offshoot, and more conjectured than real."

• Now Posted: Apex Magazine #49.

• "Karina Who Kissed Spacetime" by Indrapramit Das. Science Fiction.
     "I always remember snow speckling the orange cone of streetlight that held my first kiss. It wasn’t snowing that night. This was before time fractured, left me slipping through its cracks like a bead of water. Perhaps it had been snowing in some other timeline during that first kiss. But not that one. It had barely been a first kiss, even. But it had been cold — cold enough to turn gutter water to slippery glass by our feet."
• "Titanic!" by Lavie Tidhar
     "When I come on board the ship I pay little heed to her splendour; nor to the gaily–strewn lines of coloured electric lights, nor to the polished brass of the crew’s jacket uniforms, nor to the crowds at the dock in Southampton, waving handkerchiefs and pushing and shoving for a better look; nor to my fellow passengers. I keep my eyes open only for signs of pursuit; specifically, for signs of the Law."
• "Call Girl" by Tang Fei (translated by Ken Liu)
     "Morning climbs in through the window as shadow recedes from Tang Xiaoyi’s body like a green tide imbued with the fragrance of trees. Where the tidewater used to be, now there is just Xiaoyi’s slender body, naked under the thin sunlight."
• "Reluctance" by Cherie Priest
      "Walter McMullin puttered through the afternoon sky east of Oneida in his tiny dirigible. According to his calculations, he was somewhere toward the north end of Texas, nearing the Mexican territory west of the Republic; and any minute now he’d be soaring over the Goodnight–Loving trail."

• Now Posted: Electric Spec Volume 8, Issue 2.

• "The Disconnected" by Aaron Ritchey
     "I don't do suborbital flights, but for this job I have to. I'm too obsessed with Abby to stay away. Abby, she's the Analog Prosthetic Ego tech who went funny."
• "A Beastly Game" by Sarah Pinsker
     "Being undead felt rather like being hung over, all things considered. Ben came to that conclusion as he staggered from the alley. He tried to piece together what had happened. He had been chugging beer with his rugby mates and the team they had played earlier that evening, enjoying a good commiseration buzz."
• "The City of Tears" by Maigen Turner
     "Silence drifted among the pillars of the marketplace, the sandstone arches where no voice rose. Silk-muffled women hung tongueless bells on their doors and hushed children in whispers. At the east gate, guards inspected packtrains bearing myrrh and cinnamon, ruby and lapis, cedarwood and dye crushed from the snails of distant seas."
• "Tartarus" by Charlotte Nash
     "I never believed her. She was a Stelline psych, and they work on commission. It was her job to make me useful again, even though I was in the GIMP, prison of prisons. Even though I remember things that make me not a man."
• "Bulls and Magic" by Jarod K. Anderson
      "At first, the bull couldn't be bothered with me. My whole damn life I'd listened to my parents tell me to stay out of the western pasture. Uncle Frank even had a pale, puckered-looking scar just above his hip that he'd throw in as supporting evidence for the cantankerousness of bulls"

• Now Posted: 4 Star Stories - Spring 2013.

• "The Huntress" by Tala Bar.
"The Huntress listened to the forest. It was a mixed wood of various oaks, pines and fruit trees that spread over some low hills well below the snow line. It had a variety of animals and birds and she could hear them all, large and small, going about their business"
• "Horace and Juju Tip the Scales" by Jeremy Miller.
     "She heard them before she saw them. A twangy sort of melody rang out in the air with a high pitched voice and a bass accompaniment that rattled her brain. Kaelan had dismounted an hour before and was marching with her rearguard. Two long columns stretched out before her, kicking up dust on the wide road leading south to Tanju. She decided to stop and let her army pass before swinging around to the opposite side of the road to ferret out the source of her headache."
• "One Mississippi..." by Libby A. Smith.
 "She thought of the human’s music as she dropped to the ground, pain tearing through her chest, a sound very different than the agonizing blast of the shotgun.  She loved wandering down Beale Street where she’d first discovered music blaring from a bar, or stopping by a music store where a human might be trying out a guitar."
• "How to Have Fun at the Family Funeral" by Laura J. Underwood.
"And no, I am not knocking bucolic settings.  I'm as fond as any of my kinfolk of sitting back in the hollow, watching night falling over the mountains or listening to the trill of a screech owl on the hunt."

• Now Posted: Nightblade Issue #24. Horror. Fantasy.

• "Shifting Sands of Blood" by Rebecca Harwell
"Inara wanted so much to look up at his face. The silence dug its way under her skin. Would he show mercy? She was running out of time."
• "The Peculiar Fruit of the Savage Chinchilla" by Kate Duva"Our innocent daughter would have been horrified to see this pelt decorating her mother’s shoulder, complete with the animal’s little hollowed head, its eye holes accented by two balls of jet black glass."
• "Compassion, During and After the Fall" by Cory Cone"There is someone there, and the woman knows it is the man who is not like her. He is surrounded by the light, always by the light."
• "The Imago" by Carly Berg"Lei’s fingers knew clay and her holy imagos made the other women gasp. The thumb-sized clay baby looked real."
• "Little Stitches" by M. Shaw"I don’t think they have a language; just a rhythm, and they don’t use it to communicate so much as to wear down, to drone out."

• Now Posted: Plasma Frequency Issue 6 - June/July 2013.

 "Be My Cure" by Sara Puls.
     "I have electromagnetic-destroyerism. It is not a superpower, much as it sounds like one. And it's not a curse, not technically speaking, anyway."
"By the Stars You Will Know Her" by Siobhan Gallagher.
     "She had the eyes of an ancient: mists and lightning swirling into a maelstrom galaxy, a kind of chaos that would pull you in if you gazed too long."
"Cognitive Terminal Velocity" by Adam C. Richardson.
     "Approximately twenty-one times faster than cognitive nominal. Sir, I am having difficulty interpreting your sensory data. Are we falling?"
 "Slaying Dragons" by Brent Knowles.
     "Will the servants ever learn?" Taloma muttered as she swirled away from the polished metal mirror where she had been preparing herself for night. The double doors were to be used only during the day! Guests who came late always entered via the side entrance."
"Witchdoctors and Tears" by Jeff Bowles.
     "She and Brandon had been trying for years. On their own for a time, then with specialists, then with practitioners of...fringe medicine. Jake the witchdoctor was only the latest in a long succession of herbalists, acupuncturists, and clairvoyants."
"Good Deeds in a Weary World" by Rebecca Roland.
      "Guy expected to come back from Spring Break in Mexico with some shot glasses, a residual hangover, and maybe a tattoo. What he hadn't expected was to be sent home to Seattle in a coffin."
"Knowledge You Can’t Give" by Brynna Ramin.
      "Below Obsidian City, John Stempfel held the city's towers on his shoulders, and Sally could never tell him anything useful on the telephone"
"The Hanging Gardener" by Ryan Harvey.
      "Seluku the gardener was interested in the stormy season for one reason. It meant King Nebuchadnezzar would be more paranoid about the priests of Marduk in their temple that towered in the middle of the city. "

• Now Posted: Quantum Muse - June 2013.

• "Exile From Earth" by Gordon Rowlinson. Science Fiction. 
       "People who have no hope are a lost people."   
• "Retro Skelter" by Harry J. Bentham. Science Fiction.
      "A renowned physicist and a hated civil servant are doomed to be shot if they can't construct a time machine within three days. The task seems impossible, until an extremely wild solution emerges." 
• "Make A Wish" by James Thompson. Science Fiction.
      "Regen's pet invades his store of gold artifacts and swallows some small items he's fleeced from superstitious natives on a primitive planet. Strange things begin to happen aboard his ship while he's enroute to the dealer who will buy his gold."
• "The Alarm" by Harris Tobias. Fantasy.
     "What use is money when the dragon awakes?"

• Now Posted  Three-Lobe Burning Eye - Issue 23. Speculative Fiction

• "The Murmurous Paleoscope" by Dixon Chance
      "I wish I had better news about the dig, but ere I relate that tale, I would be remiss if I did not assure you that the Paleoscope and Lithotome have made the journey to Utah fully intact, though it was a hard thing those last hundred miles by stage"
• "One in the Morning and One at Night" by Gemma Files
    "But her dreams smell of decay that night, and a tone runs underneath everything, a hiss. The dead-technology sense-memory of static on an empty channel."
• "Scolyard’s “The Constructs Forsee Their Doom" by Daniel Ausema
     "The most significant relationship of my life — and I’ve led a long and strange one, a life poisoned and infected by my beloved, decaying, doomed city — was with a man I never met. Do you know of the artist Pen Scolyard? Few have heard of him today, but he did have one work that people once knew. One painting that … well, that made him great."
• "The Hecate Centuria" by Claude Lalumière
     "In the light of the full moon, her vision enhanced by vermilion, Dematria watched in horror as Hecate’s changeling centurions terrorized her beloved goddess-city, Venera. The Romans had so far ignored the archipelago; in return the city-state fed the Roman capital with a steady supply of underpriced vermilion spice."
• "Big in Japan" by Lawrence Conquest
     "On the third day they bound my father with rope and lowered his body over the side of the boat. He could no longer speak by that point, his voice having degenerated into a series of choking coughs, but his eyes retained their old intelligence"
• "I Will Trade With You" by J.M. McDermott
      "North, I keep on, but there’s no way to know how far I walked before I stopped to rest on this lump of sand instead of that one. I need to rest to keep walking with these old, uncertain bones. When I’m ready to move again, I crawl a little, and wait for my legs to work right below me."

E-Books
• At Amazon.com: For Odin, for Thor, for Asgard by David Scholes.Fantasy.
• At Amazon.com: Moonlit by Jadie Jones. YA Fantasy. [via Pixel of Ink]

• At Free eBooks Daily:
• Bound by Blood by Tracey Jane Jackson. Paranormal Romance.
• Hike up Devil's Mountain by Penny Estelle. Early YA Fantasy.
• The Eden Project: Humanity's Last Chance by DP Fitzsimons. YA Science Fiction.
• Sapience by Bret Wellman. SciFi Romance.
• The Boat - Zombie Survivors by Christine Dougherty. Horror Thriller.
• Flee by Miranda Kavi. Paranormal Romance.
• Forever Fae by L.P. Dover. Fantasy.
• The Ups and Downs of Being Dead by M.R. Cornelius. Post-Apocalyptic Thriller.
• Hallowed Be Thy Name by Ryan Schneider. Science Fiction.
• Aftershock by S. A. Archer. Urban Fantasy.
• Touching Evil by Amber Garr. Urban Fantasy
• Vampire Miami by Phil Tucker. Fantasy. 
• Dark Union by SM Reine. Urban Fantasy.
• Refined by William Stadler. Fantasy.
• The Star Agency by R.E. Weber. YA Science Fiction.
• The Adventures of Rosie Crucial by Kim Farnell. Historical Fantasy.

At Smashwords:

• "Don't Rhine on My Parade" by Erin Evans. Contemporary Fantasy. 82k words.
• "Sleeping Beauty: Danger Within" by Chris Van Dyk. Fantasy. 3k words.
• "Meaning of Life" by R.A. Sears. Paranormal. 4k words.
• "The Temporary Wizard of Locklynn" by S.G. Rogers. YA Fantasy. 9k words.
• "New Beginnings" by Sonya Sparks. 50k words.
• "Chains of Prophecy" by Jason Crawford. 62k words.
• "The Zombies of Lancaster" by Jason Scimitar. 78k words. 
• "After: First Light" by Scott Nicholson. 34k words. Science fiction. Apocalyptic.
• "Day One" by Bryan Simpson. 2k words. Science fiction.
• "The River of Blood" by Roland Matthew and Joseph Ziemke. 2k words. Horror.
• "All The World In Wax" by Ray Daley. 2k words. Horror.
• "This Old Rock" by G David Nordley. 22k words. Science Fiction.
• "Masie's Mind" by Kevin L. O'Brien. 15k words. Science Fiction.
• "Spare Parts For Spaceships" by Andrew McEwan. 11k words. Science Fiction.

Flash Fiction

• At Every Day Fiction: "A Good Reason & the Real One" by Randall Brown. Science Fiction.
• At Strange Horizons: "Again, Pygmalion" by Stella Nickerson.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Guide To Alien Sex For Dummies" by Geetanjali Dighe.

At Kazka Press:

• "Wasted Youth" by Alex Gorman.
• "1116 Santiago Drive" by Holliann R. Kim
• "I Must Be Dead" by Michelle Ristuccia.
• "Testament" byJeff Stehman.
• "The Bleeding Game" by Natalia Theodoridou.

At Nightblade: Poems

• "The Traveling Dead" by Keith Kennedy.
• "Forbidden Island" by J.A. Grier.
• "An Unexpected Review" by Michele Bannister.
• "Where We Died" by Shira Lipkin.
• "Testament" by Jeff Stehman.

Audio Fiction
• At Lightspeed: "Princess Lucinda and the Hound of the Moon" by Theodora Goss.
      Described Above

• At Protecting Project Pulp: "The Rats in the Walls" by H. P. Lovecraft. Horror.
     "The place had not been inhabited since the reign of James the First, when a tragedy of intensely hideous, though largely unexplained, nature had struck down the master, five of his children, and several servants; and driven forth under a cloud of suspicion and terror the third son, my lineal progenitor and the only survivor of the abhorred line."

• At Strange Horizons: "Jinki and the Paradox" by Sathya Stone.
     Described Above

Comics

• At Atomic Kommie Comics: "Spirits from Outer Space" Sci-Fi. (1952)
• At Four-Color Shadows: "The Living Ghost" Horror. (1948)
• At The Horrors of It All: "Headless Horror!" Horror. (1952)
• At The Horrors of It All: "Carnival of Terror" Horror. (1952)

Gaming 
At DriveThruRPG:  Rules & Magic book for the LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Game.
       Art free (except the cover) version of this Original Dungeons and Dragons retro-clone.  The game is rated as being only for adults (but that might be mostly for the art and not relevant here?)

Other Genres 

• Audio at Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine: "The Harmless Pursuits of Archibald Stamp" by Ann Cleeves.
• E-Book at Free eBooks Daily: The Good Knight by Sarah Woodbury.  Medieval Mysteries.

Yolen, Rambo, Tidhar, and Other Great Free Fiction

 There's plenty of great free fiction this afternoon, with stories by prominent genre writers (Jane Yolen, Lavie Tidhar, Cat Rambo, etc.).  There are two free e-zines (Mirror Dance and Crime Factory), great audio fiction, and flash fiction!  More to come this weekend.



[Art from Mirror Dance, linked below]



 
Fiction
• At Anotherealm:  "Restorist" by William Huggins.
     "I was tending my forest when he leapt from his ship. I saw it falling and on fire. His leap was the bravest thing I have ever witnessed—he leapt from one certain death to another. Even with trees to break his fall he never should have survived."

• At Aurora Wolf: "The Amulet" by Heidi Wainer. Fantasy.
     "Jayla opened the latch and stepped into the dark cottage. She had lived in the witch’s house her entire life but this was the first time it felt eerie. The thought made her chuckle; being inside the witch’s house only felt scary after the death of the witch."

• At Buzzy Mag: "Threads of Pearl, Writhing" by Gwendolyn Clare.
     "They tell you it won’t hurt—that part is the lie. It does. But afterward, you won’t feel any pain at all. Ever again. They believe the lie because they can’t remember what “hurt” means."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Crabapple" by Lavie Tidhar.
       "Youssou dreamed that he was flying. There was no gravity in that place. Dimensions stretched and shifted. A ring in space, kilometers long, spinning. Only the center remained free of gravity."

• At Giganotosaurus: "Logic and Magic in the Time of the Boat Lift" by Cat Rambo and Ben Burgis.
       "They said the Marielitas were escoria – scum. The abuelitas muttered it to each other, and the young girls coming home from school clustered together like butterflies, looking thrilled and worried whenever the wind whistled at them. The newspapers said Miami was under siege, that Castro had loosed the worst from the Cuban prisons and madhouses."

• At Tor.com: "The Jewel in the Toad Queen’s Crown" by Jane Yolen. Fantasy.
      "Why, they are quite barbaric,” the queen said to her prime minister, making small talk since she wasn’t actually certain where Zululand was. Somewhere in deepest, darkest Africa. That much at least she was certain. She would have to get out the atlas. Again. She had several of Albert’s old atlases, and the latest American one, a Swinton."

• At Weird Fiction Review: "Annie" by Jehanne Jean-Charles.
      "We’d been married a year when Jacques took me to see the house he’d inherited. It wasn’t far from Paris, but no sooner had we left the highway than we found ourselves strangers in a strange land. Jacques couldn’t quite recall the way. He’d come only once, by train, and we passed through tiny villages whose denizens gave odd answers to our questions."

• At Weird Fiction Review: "Remembrance is Something Like a House" by Will Ludwigsen.
     "Every day for three decades, the abandoned house strains against its galling anchors, hoping to pull free. It has waited thirty years for its pipes and pilings to finally decay so it can leave for Florida to find the Macek family."

• Now Posted: The Spring 2013 Issue of Mirror Dance. Fantasy.
        Fiction by Sarah L. Byrne, Chloe Ackerman, Sandi Leibowitz, C. E. Hyun, Brooke Wonders, and Cordelia Harrison. - Poetry by Helen Ogden, Anna Sykora, S. Brackett Robertson, and Shelly Bryant

Flash Fiction

• At Every Day Fiction:  "It All Started With a Kiss" by Robert J. Santa. Fantasy.
• At Flashes in the Dark: "Starvation" by Turlough Delaney . Horror.
• At KasmaSF: "Three Roads to Jerusalem" by Anatoly Belilovsky
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The Unwelcome" by Desmond Hussey. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Escape Pod: "The Very Pulse of the Machine" by Michael Swanwick. Science Fiction.
     "Martha kept her eyes forward, concentrated on walking. Jupiter to one shoulder, Daedalus’s plume to the other. Nothing to it. Just trudge, drag, trudge, drag. Piece of cake."

• At LibriVox: The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (2nd version). Science Fantasy.
     "In this third installment of the adventures of John Carter on Mars, our hero labors under sentence of death (for having returned from the land of the dead)"

• At Pseudopod: "The Trinket" by P.G. Bell. Horror.
     "They burned Gederus in the yard outside the barracks. Dawn had brought the first break in rain for ten days and the men, still cold and filthy from the construction work, cast anxious glances at the black weight of cloud that threatened to stamp out and drown the struggling flames. Those closest to the pyre stole a guilty pleasure from its warmth."

• At Tales to Terrify: Episode #60. Horror.
     "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Piggy Class" by Nicole Cushing.
           No description found
      "The Kindness of Strangers" by Ray Banks.
            No description found 

Other Genres

• Audio at American Radio Theater: "The Pawn Shop" by Kay Lutz. Humor.
• Audio at Classic Tales Podcast: "The Man Who Knew Too Much. (part 4 of 8) by G.K. Chesterton.
• Audio at Decoder Ring Theater: "Red Panda Adventures (91) - The Lab Rats" Noir. Superhero. Humor.
• Audio at Journey Into: "Lieutenant Hornblower: Court of Inquiry" by C.S. Forester" Adventure. OTR.
• Now Posted: Crime Factory Issue 12.

Post-Holiday Free Fiction Links

 Back after a holiday day off with some very good stuff.  There's some fantastic free fiction at some of the big name sites, and some equally good audio fiction!  More later.

 Today's QD radio is "The Thing From The Sea" a classic weird horror tale from Dark Fantasy (1941).

 [Art from Drabblecast]




Fiction
• At The Colored Lens: "The Transfiguration of Vincent" by Ana-Maria Molon. Slipstream.
      "I don’t believe in miracles. I don’t believe in magic. Yet Beatrice insists that it was a combination of these asinine forces that saved Vincent’s life. What words does she use to describe Maggie’s death? She has none. Which is fitting, for neither do I."

• At Lightspeed: "Family Teeth (Part 6): St. Polycarp’s Home For Happy Wanderers" by Sarah Langan. Fantasy.
      "Sheila Halpern got her looks from her Momma, who died pushing her out. Died before, even, but still kept pushing. “You’re the prettiest thing in the whole darn world,” her daddy told her the day he put her on the train for the St. Polycarp’s Home for Happy Wanderers, his age-soft teeth all chipped so everything sounded muffled. She was eight years old, lice riddled, and 90% liar like her daddy."

• At Lightspeed:  "Lázaro y Antonio" by Marta Randall. Science Fiction.
     "Sure Lázaro was broke, but he still wasn’t interested in rolling drunks, not even rich belligerent Academy chilito drunks. This one had shown up last night with some pendejo brotherhood, too many to take on, but tonight he was alone and still a dick so Lázaro had no qualms about holding Antonio’s new foxleather jacket while Antonio whacked the guy’s fright-coifed blond head, just precisely so."

• At Night Shade Books: Eclipse Online - "The Memcordist" by Lavie Tidhar. Science Fiction.
     "Beyond the dome the ice-storms of Titan rage; inside it is warm, damp, with the smell of sewage seeping through and creepers growing through the walls of the above-ground dwellings. He tries to find her scent in the streets of Polyport and fails."

• At Nightmare Magazine: "Foul Weather" by Daniel H. Wilson. Horror.
      "Some things you  can’t figure out. Not even with a whole heap of scratch paper and a ribbon of data from a chattering teletype machine. Not before time runs out. And time is like progress—she’s not stopping for anybody. The answer is out there, though, in the weather."

Flash Fiction 

• At Daily Science Fiction: "In The White of the Snow" by Mark Patrick Lynch.Fairy Tale
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Ivy Rose"by Dan Hart. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At DrabbleCast: "Postapocalypsemas" by Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw.
      "It was just a whiff, a few molecules of something familiar and therefore sweet, wafting on a late afternoon breeze that otherwise carried only the usual: formaldehyde, benzene, dioxin, chromium, and miscellaneous particulate matter both organic and non-."

• At Lightspeed: "Family Teeth (Part 6): St. Polycarp’s Home For Happy Wanderers" by Sarah Langan. Fantasy.
      Described above.

• At Nightmare Magazine: "Foul Weather" by Daniel H. Wilson. Horror.
      Described above

• At PodCastle: "Seeking Captain Random" by Vylar Kaftan. Fantasy.

      "When I climbed the hill of bones, the shaman was waiting for me,” Darren said, stirring Nutrasweet into his herbal tea.  “Except now he was a giant rat.  Like ten feet tall."

• At StarShipSofa: "The Boneless One - Part 2" by Alec Nevala-Lee.
      No description
 
Other Genres

• Audio at LibriVox: The Snow Queen and Other Stories by Hans Christian Andersen. Fairy Tales.
• Audio at Project Pulp: “Hell On Dirt Oval” by Lester Del Rey. Racing.

Free Genre Audio Fiction and More Part One

Fire up your MP3 players, there's some quite good free audio fiction this morning with more to come later.  There are the usual Friday greats, Escape Pod and Pseudo Pod, as well as "Dagon" at SFFaudio, and there are some "new to QD" sites. And there's some quite good written fiction.

[Art from "The Ungreat Escape" linked below]




Fiction
• At Buzzy Mag: "Dance" by Laura Anne Gilman.
     "“It’s a beautiful tree.” Her brother came in from the garage, shaking the snow off his boots and dropping his overnight bag by the door."

• At Cosmos: "The Ungreat Escape" by Siobhan Gallagher. Science Fiction.
       "The most important part of a heist is getting away – and that’s where things go wrong."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Seashells" by Lavie Tidhar.
       "Then it happened. Shell remembers it only in confused snatches of recall. Turbulence rising out of the sea. A man rising high in the air, his face contorted in--what? Agony? Ecstasy?--he looked silly and pitiful hanging there in his Speedo, his hairy back still glistening with sea water. The man's head exploding, like a ripe watermelon like they sold, here, by the side of the road. Red rain falling down."

Audio Fiction
• At Celtic Myth Podshow: "Faerie Days and Faerie Knights" (Welsh Mythology Ep. 3). Fantasy. Myth.
     "In this tale, Pwyll finds his way around the Court of Arawn, seeing many strange marvels and meeting many mysterious people. As the time of the evening Feast approaches, he finally gets to meet the Great Queen herself..!" [ Episodes One and Two]

• At Desert Gems Audio "Fisherman and the Djinni: - Parts One and Two" compiled by Sir Richard Burton. Fantasy. Myth.
     "Sherazade begins the tale of "Fisherman and the Djinni." A poor humble fisherman unearths from the bottom of the ocean 1800 year old brass jar containing  a malicious and wicked Djinni. The evil spirit offers him choice of deaths, and the fisherman engages in tricks and tales to outwit him. The first is the story of "King Yunan and Sage Duban."

• At Earbud Theater: "Beneath The Basement" by Doug TenNapel. Horror.
      "There's no better debunker than Dr. Fullbright. You've probably seen his website where he offers anyone $100,000 for proof of a spiritual entity. He and his trusty cameraman Neville Dylan have never encountered a case that can't be promptly dismissed as a hoax, a delusion or utter malarky. But a visit to one Natalie Jessup just might put the real deal right in their cynical laps"

• At Escape Pod: "Oubliette" by J. Kelley Anderson. Science Fiction.
     "The half-buried thing hadn’t moved once, but I didn’t have to include that in the story when I got back to base. The great, gray mass of it rose at least ten feet out of the red earth, tucked close to the sheer wall of the plateau. That part I’d tell. If there had been anything like a head, I would have shot it, but it just looked like a giant, lumpy football, oozing a viscous yellowy liquid here and there."

• At Pseudopod: "Feeding The Machine" by Hunter James Martin. Horror.
       "The atmosphere doesn’t help things either, the horrid gloom we work within. Even in my apathy I can taste it: the darkness that nestles within the oily depths of the shadows, the dull throb that resonates through the caverns, and the dreadful machine, always rumbling like an empty stomach."

• At SFFaudio: "Dagon" by H.P. Lovecraft. Horror.
     "The testament of a tortured, morphine-addicted man who plans to commit suicide over an incident that occurred early on in World War I when he was a merchant marine officer. First published in the November 1919 edition of The Vagrant (issue #11)."

Other Genres

• Audio at The Classic Tales Podcast: "The Chimes, Part 4 of 4" by Charles Dickens.
• Audio at Forgotten Classics: "The Sea Hag" by Charles Harry Whedbee. Folk Tale. 
• Audio at Forgotten Classics: "The Unforeseen Chapter 6" by Dorothy Macardle. Gothic (earlier chapters)
• Audio at LibriVox: Hans Christian Andersen: Fairytales and Short Stories Volume 3