Showing posts with label comic books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comic books. Show all posts

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Was This the Free Fiction That Launch'd a Thousand Ships?

Another small batch of cool, free genre items in a variety of formats.

[Art from "Space Ace" in comics below]






Fiction
• At The WiFiles: "Deep Sleeping" by Amy Cornelius. Speculative Fiction.
      "The screen of thorns before him gave Jude pause. It was the first time he had considered turning around and going home without completing his quest. It was fear that made him stop. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the stories that had haunted him since he was a child. Fear of dying without really living. But fear was also what had brought him here in the first place. The fear of failing. How could he be expected to rule an entire country if he couldn’t overcome one simple obstacle such as this?"

• Flash Fiction at 365 Tomorrows: "Full Circle" by John Kinney. Science Fiction.

E-Books
Audio Fiction
 • At Clarkesworld: "This is Why We Jump" by Jacob Clifton. Science Fiction.
      "I can curl myself around him like an ammonite, and call him little names, and he will smile. Arms and legs getting bigger every day. A little starfish, crowding me out. It is my name for him, but only when he will be gentled can I say. It happens less and less".


 • At LibriVox: "Herbert West: Re-animator" by H. P. Lovecraft. Horror.
     " The first horrible incident of our acquaintance was the greatest shock I ever experienced, and it is only with reluctance that I repeat it. As I have said, it happened when we were in the medical school where West had already made himself notorious through his wild theories on the nature of death and the possibility of overcoming it artificially."

 • At Wily Writers: "Live by the Sword" by Andrew Knighton.
     "For Ubu, the gladiator life is short and brutal, but in the shadow of the arena there is a chance for something more"

Comics
Other Genres
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Tuesday, June 4, 2013

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 Smashwords:
Flash Fiction
At Kazka Press:
At Nightblade: Poems
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
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 
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Friday, May 31, 2013

Friday

Another day of fantastic freebies, more tomorrow (unless I'm sleeping and stuff).  Lots of good stuff today, fiction, flash fiction, audio fiction, comics, e-books, and the video section ushers in a classic Poe adaptation.










Fiction
• At Buzzy Mag: "Something You Don’t Want To Find" by Annie Neugebauer.
     "At first, her parents didn’t believe her when Chris told them she could hear the scorpions—not until she was proven right so many times. The clinking of her blinds? It could have so easily been a single slat caught on the lever of the lock, slipping back into place through a combination of air current and gravity, but it had indeed been a scorpion nestled within."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "An Exodus of Wings" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam.
     "Before Heidi came along, Michael did everything he could to keep the damn faeries out of his apartment. Every night he washed and dried his dishes, never left one dripping in the drying rack. Always fished the food particles from the drain, took the trash out, sealed his cereal in glass jars."

• At Real Pulp: "The Moon Moth" by Jack Vance. 1961 [via SF Signal]
     "Ser Edwer Thissell has to search for a murderous imposter on a planet where everyone wears a mask! "

• At SF Signal: “The Black Abacus”  by Yoon Ha Lee.
     "In space there are no seasons, and this is true too of the silver wheels that are humanity’s homes beyond Earth and the silver ships that carried us there. In autumn there are no fallen leaves, and in spring, no living flowers; no summer winds, no winter snow. There are no days except our own calendars and the stars’ slow candles in the dark."

Flash Fiction
  • At Beware the Hairy Mango: "Pool Man" by Matthew Sanborn Smith. Audio.
  • At Every Day Fiction: "One Life Story" by David Castlewitz. Fantasy.
  • At Flashes in the Dark: "Slightly Ajar" by Sandra Seamans. Horror.
  • At Nature: "A Time for Peace" by S. R. Algernon. Science Fiction.
  • At 365 Tomorrows: "Field Test" by Jae Miles. Science Fiction.

E-books at Free ebooks Daily:
Audio Books
• At The Classic Tales Podcast: "The Repairer of Reputations Parts One and Two" by Robert W. Chambers. Science Fiction.
       "America is fat and prosperous. We’ve warred with the world, and have gotten rid of the riff-raff. A new era is arising, change is in the air, and to top it all off, the first Government Lethal Chamber is now open for public patronage. Science Fiction from 1895."

• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Episode 04 - The Land That Time Forgot" Adventure.
     "A struggle almost leaves the sub in the command of the Germans, But Lys, who is innocent of any treachery, cannot forgive our hero for doubting her loyalties."

• At LibriVox: "Four Science Fiction Stories" by G. L. Vandenburg
     " In the first, Martian V.F.W., some strange visitors join a parade; in the second, Jubilation, U.S.A, our first visitors from outer space encounter a One-Armed Bandit and don't exactly hit the jackpot; in the third, Moon Glow, the first Americans on the Moon receive an unwelcomed surprise; and in the last, The Observers, a sinister plot involving bald men is thwarted by a dumb secretary "

• At Pseudopod: "The Abyss" by Leonid Andreyev. Horror.
     "The light was gone, the shadows died, everything became pale, dumb, lifeless. At that point of the horizon where earlier the glowing sun had blazed, there now, in silence, crept dark masses of cloud, which step by step consumed the light blue spaces. The clouds gathered, jostled one another, slowly and reticently changed the contours of awakened monsters; they advanced, driven, as it were, against their will by some terrible, implacable force. Tearing itself away from the rest, one tiny luminous cloud drifted on alone, a frail fugitive."

• At Tales to Terrify:  Episode No. 73, Bram Stoker No. 2. Horror.
      “Magdala Amygdala” by Lucy A. Snyder and “Righteous” by Weston Ochse

Comics
Video
• At The Internet Archive : NBC Matinee Theater: The Fall of the House of Usher (1956) Poe adaptation.
     "It is rather amazing that 650 episodes of Matinee Theatre were produced and that it was live and in color."
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Friday, May 24, 2013

Friday Freebies

 More good free fiction, including comics, audio fiction, flash fiction, e-books, and online text fiction. All cool.  More tomorrow with more links both new and stolen from the hard working Regan Wolfrom at SF Signal.


 

 [Art from "Bride of Death" linked in comics below]


 
Fiction
• At Author's Website: "Gnome on Girl on Gnome: A Love Story  Part 2 of 2"  by Regan Wolfrom
      "Marguerite woke up to the rays of the sun, and for a moment it felt like she’d never left the glade of blue and white flowers and little brown-capped mushrooms. But she remembered what had happened"

• At Cosmos: "(Yet Another Episode Of) The BIG Show" by Mark Cole. Science Fiction.
     "The earth shook, shattered concrete sprayed over us. The wall of green that had appeared only inches from us burst out of the ground and vanished off into the distance. Four or five blocks away, the monstrous foot crashed to the ground again; I got only the haziest impression of what the rest of the creature looked like."

• At Daily Science Fiction:: "The Last Tiger" by Joanne Anderton.
     "The first thing Edward noticed was the smell--like a poorly cooked protein-slab, a little delicious, a little too raw. He wasn't accustomed to animals that smelled. The room was quiet, closed-in and dark but for the low rumble of deep breathing and two burning eyes in the corner. Edward paused at the door to wait for his sight to adjust."

• At Short-Story.me: "The Body Shop" by Andy Morris. Horror.
    "Some people are born lucky while others are not and Henry was most definitely part of the latter group. Being out of work and soon to be homeless, this wasn’t how Henry had envisioned the start of his adult life. His sister was moving to Spain to be with her boyfriend and was selling her flat which meant Henry had to find somewhere else to live. But first, he needed to find a job."  

E-Books
• At Free eBooks Daily: 
Flash Fiction
Audio

• At The Classic Tales Podcast: "The Repairer of Reputations, 1 of 2" by Robert W. Chambers.
     "America is fat and prosperous. We’ve warred with the world, and have gotten rid of the riff-raff. A new era is arising, change is in the air, and to top it all off, the first Government Lethal Chamber is now open for public patronage. Science Fiction from 1895."

• At Escape Pod: "A Gun for Dinosaur" by L. Sprague de Camp. Science Fiction.
     "No, I’m sorry, Mr. Seligman, but I can’t take you hunting Late Mesozoic dinosaur. Yes, I know what the advertisement says. Why not? How much d’you weigh? A hundred and thirty? Let’s see; that’s under ten stone, which is my lower limit. I could take you to other periods, you know. I’ll take you to any period in the Cenozoic. I’ll get you a shot at an entelodont or a uintathere."

• The Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs:  "Episode 02 - The Land that Time Forgot"
      "Edgar Rice Burroughs, tells of his discovery of the proverbial message in a bottle – a thermos bottle, actually, while fishing on the south coast of Greenland. The message tells of a man whose family has been building submarines for the international arms race leading up to World War I."

• At Tales to Terrify: "No 72 The 2012 Bram Stoker Nominees Part 1"
  • “Bury My Heart at Marvin Gardens” by Joe McKinney
  • “Surrounded by the Mutant Rain Forest” by Bruce Boston
  • “Available Light” by John Palisano
Comics
Other Genres
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Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Terrific Tuesday Treats

Many good freebies today, including two 'zines, numerous short stories, flash fiction, comics, e-books, etc.  Be sure to check out SF Signal's daily freebies post, especially since, reversing the natural order of the universe, I swiped a link from Regan Wolfrom today.

[Art from "Deathchaser" by D.L. Watson, linked below]




Fiction
• At Author's Site: "Tribute" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Pirates.
     " But when the crew begin writing about a ghostly vision—a vision impossible to believe but inadvisable to ignore—he must address the danger facing the ship and her crew. And he must make a choice that will affect every last man on board."

• At The Colored Lens: "The Desert Cold Oasis and Spa" by Emily B. Cataneo.  Slipstream.
     "The woman in the diner’s backroom sat in a chair–but no, she wasn’t just sitting. She had become the chair, or the chair was eating her, consuming her like a wicker tumor. Half her teeth were gone and white willow strands had forced through the empty spots in her gums."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "It's Good to See You" by Douglas Rudoff. Science Fiction.
     "Most people were unsettled by the journey past the dead to the ship's forward viewing dome. Brad didn't mind as it allowed him solitude. He floated through the zero gravity of the dimly lit, quarter-mile-long corridor of the necropolis, pulling himself along the rungs between the rows of thousands of white sarcophagi encircling him on all sides, the blank faces of their occupants just barely visible through small windows. In four days, he'd be joining them."

• At Lightspeed: "The Traditional"  by Maria Dahvana Headley. Science Fiction.
      "By your first anniversary, the world’s stopped making paper, and so you can’t give your boyfriend the traditional gift. You never would have anyway, regardless of circumstances. You’re not that kind of girl. You pride yourself"

• At Lightspeed: "The Man Who Carved Skulls"  by Richard Parks. Fantasy.
     “I married your mother for her skull. It’s no secret.” Jarak put aside his rasps and gouges for the moment, resting his eyes and mind from the precise, exacting work his trade demanded. He didn’t mind his son’s persistent questions at such times. Akan was at an age when he should be curious and, if curiosity was a duty, Akan was a dedicated boy. It wasn’t as though Purlo the Baker, whose skull rested patiently on Jarak’s workbench, was in a hurry."

• At Strange Horizons: "Hear the Enemy, My Daughter" by Kenneth Schneyer.
       "Now Kesi is four and does not mention him at all. She remembers him; when I point to his picture, she tells me who Jabari is. But she does not begin conversation about him. She does not ask when he will return. She does not ask what it means to die."

• At Tor.com:  "We Have Always Lived On Mars" by Cecil Castellucci. Science Fiction.
       "Nina, one of the few descendants of human colony on Mars that was abandoned by Earth, is surprised to discover that she can breathe the toxic atmosphere of the Martian surface.  The crew, thinking that their attempts at terraforming and breeding for Martian adaptability have finally payed off, rejoice at the prospect of a brighter future."

• At World SF Blog: "A Puddle of Blood" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Vampires.
     "Domingo waits to see if the next news items will expand on the drug-war story. He is fond of yellow journalism. He also likes stories about vampires; they seem exotic. There are no vampires in Mexico City: their kind has been a no-no for the past thirty years, around the time the Federal District became a city-state."

Now Posted: Galaxy's Edge #2. Science Fiction. [Via SF Signal]
Now Posted: Sorcerous Signals May - Jul '13. Fantasy.
Flash Fiction
E-Books
At Free eBooks Daily:
At Smashwords:
Audio Fiction
• At Lightspeed: "The Traditional"  by Maria Dahvana Headley. Science Fiction.
     Described Above.
• At Strange Horizons: "Hear the Enemy, My Daughter" by Kenneth Schneyer.
     Described Above. 

Comics
Other Genres
  • Audio at Project Pulp: "The Spirit of France" by S. B. H. Hurst. Pulp f=Fiction.
  • Flash at Every Day Fiction: "Margins" by D. Z. Watt.
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Friday, May 3, 2013

Part Three

A few more freebies, including comics and Tales to Terrify.



[Art from "The Hungry Horde" linked below]







Fiction
•  At Big Pulp: "Paula" by Court Merrigan. Science Fiction.
     "I am in my car, foraying into the lower city in search of life and books. Autumn storms loom gray over the city, twinging the air with the scent of ice-cracked winter. Rain makes an opaque smear of my windshield so I pull over. Through the steady-streaking glass I see a shopfront, its marquee a freakishly grinning clown juggling amidst sprinting elephants, relic from a past century. I duck in through the rain."

•  At Enchanted Conversation: "The Curious Tale of Mr. Fox" by Lissa Sloan. Fairy Tale.
     "I am going to tell you the story of my sister Lady Mary and Mr. Fox. But I am not sure quite how to begin.  My brothers and I could never understand what she saw in the fellow.  She was hardly alone in her admiration of him.  Indeed, many of the ladies of the village of L_____ thought Mr. Fox the most agreeable gentleman of their acquaintance.  Perhaps it was his charming, almost lazy smile, his bright mischievous eyes, or his fine red coat, which I daresay many of the gentlemen envied."

Audio Fiction
•  At Tales to Terrify: Episode No 69
      “It’s Just Tearing Me All Apart” by O.D. Hegre and “The Anatomy of Seahorses” by John Dodds

Comics
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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Comics and More Fun Freebies

A ton of online horror and sci-fi comic book stories as well as a few other cool items.


[Art from "Flash Gordon and the Space Pirates" in comics below]




Fiction
• At Paizo: "The Irregulars - Chapter Four: Out with a Bang" by Neal F. Litherland. Fantasy.
     "They moved silent as breath through the empty tunnels, tucking charges into crevices and butting them against wooden support beams. The devil's scent of saltpeter made the caverns smell like Hell, ready to burn with a single, ragged spark. Fairy lights danced in the deeper darkness where the Lieutenant and Trilaina licked wicks and set fuses, making certain everything was perfect."

• At Tor.Com: "The Ink Readers of Doi Saket" by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.
     "People send their dreams and wishes floating down the Mae Ping River with the hope that those dreams will be captured, read and come true. It is a surprise what some wish for and why. One can never know what’s inside someone’s heart—what they really truly want, and those dreams sometimes reveal our true selves."

Flash Fiction
Audio Fiction
• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Episode 15 - The Beasts of Tarzan" Adventure.
      "Chapter XV – 'Down the Ugambi' - Jane Clayton, fleeing Rokoff, is making her way back to the Ugambi River. Hot on her trail is Rokoff. Tarzan is following Rokoff."

Comics
Other Genres
  • Fiction at The New Yorker: "Mexican Manifesto" by Roberto Bolaño.
  • Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "For Two" by Paige Zubel.
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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Ken Liu and Other Great Free Fiction

 Another great daily (erm almost daily) batch of free fiction from many great sites. Today's listing includes online fiction, flash fiction, audio fiction, e-books, and comics.



[Art from Prince of Bryanae linked below in e-books]








Fiction
• At The Colored Lens: "Eight of Swords – Part 2 Feeding the Dragon" by Timothy Mudie. Speculative Fiction.
     " I have to say, it was easier than I expected to exhume Keith. We were able to drive my parents’ station wagon right into the cemetery, parking just a few feet from the grave. The soil was still loose and we managed to frantically shovel our way through the six feet to the coffin in under an hour. I had insisted on both Eric and I wearing all black, including ski masks over our faces, but no one came by."

• At Cosmos: "Henry Fairfield" by Barton Paul Levenson. Science Fiction.
     "Bradley turned around again and smiled. 'Would you think I was around the bend if I told you I was looking for a way to travel in time?'"

• At Lightspeed: "Let’s Take This Viral" by Rich Larson. Science Fiction.
      "Default hadn’t been down in the nocturns for some time, probably half an orbit, but he had just dissolved the geneshare contract with his now-ex-lover and needed to get completely [. . .] perforated to take his mind off things. His lift was full of revelers all laughing and widecasting the same synthesized whalesong from Old Old Earth."

• At Lightspeed: "Ash Minette" by Felicity Savage. Fantasy.
      "The candlelight in our attic erased the imperfections from Libby’s round, heavy features: She seemed time-smoothened, a madonna of golden stone. But when she posed for me in the dress, her over-ripeness—the way she thrust out her chest, the coy glances—spoilt the illusion, corrupted it with indecent knowledge."

• At World SF Blog: "Case Notes of a Witchdoctor" by Nick Wood.
     "He’d reached the age where he’d seen it all—liars, psychopaths, the neurotic… and the completely insane. Psychosis it was, though, that still just about held his interest."

Flash Fiction
  • At Daily Science Fiction: "Linger" by Ken Liu. 
  • At 365 Tomorrows: "Forgiveness Day" by Clint Wilson. Science Fiction.

E-Books
At Free eBooks Daily:
At Smashwords:

Audio Fiction
• At Lightspeed: "Let’s Take This Viral" by Rich Larson. Science Fiction.
     Described above

• At Protecting Project Pulp: “The Crawling Creature” by Donald Bayne Hobart.
    "Every step meant danger in the trail of Dan Buckly’s mysterious, sinister killer!" - first published in Thrilling Adventures, July 1932.

• At Pseudopod: "Forgiveness Day" by Clint Wilson. Horror.
     "“It is very seldom that one encounters what would appear to be sheer unadulterated evil in a human face; an evil, I mean, active, deliberate, deadly, dangerous. Folly, heedlessness, vanity, pride, craft, meanness, stupidity - yes. But even Iagos in this world are few, and devilry is as rare as witchcraft."

Comics
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Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Wednesday Freebies

A little bit of everything today!






Fiction
• At Nightmare Magazine: "The Sign in the Moonlight" by David Tallerman. Horror.
     "You will have heard, no doubt, of the Bergenssen expedition—if only from the manner of its loss. For a short while, that tragedy was deemed significant and remarkable enough to adorn the covers of every major newspaper in the civilized world."

• At Tor.com: "The Hanging Game" by Helen Marshall. 
     "Sometimes a game, even a sacred game, can have far-reaching consequences. In bear country young Skye learns just how far she is willing to go to play the game properly in order carry on the traditions that came before her and will most likely continue long after she is gone."

Flash Fiction
E-Books
At Free eBooks Daily:
At Smashwords
Audio Fiction
• At LibriVox: "Jetta of the Lowlands" by Ray Cummings. Science Fiction.
     "And the depths between? Unreal landscape! Mysterious realm which now we call the bottom of the sea! Worn and rounded crags; bloated mud-plains; noisome reaches of ooze which once were the cold and dark and silent ocean floor, caked and drying in the sun. And off to the south the little fairy mountain tops of the West Indies rearing their verdured crowns aloft."

• At The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences: "All That Glitters" by Dan Rabarts. Steampunk.
       "Agents Lachlan King and Barry Ferguson are called to an isolated mining town to investigate the disappearance of a young Chinese girl. They found the town all but abandoned, and as they descend into the realm of Ruaumoko, the Maori god of earthquakes they find an explosive situation that will test both agents and their equipment sorely."

• At Nightmare Magazine: "The Sign in the Moonlight" by David Tallerman. Horror.
     Described Above

• At StarShipSofa: "Jackie’s Boy" Part 1 by Steven Popkes. Science Fiction.
      "Michael fell in love with her the moment he saw her.The Long Bottom Boys had taken over the gate of the Saint Louis Zoo from Nature Phil’s gang. London Bob had killed in single combat, and eaten, Nature Phil. That, pretty much, constituted possession. The Keepers didn’t mind as long as it stayed off the grounds. So the Boys waited outside to harvest anyone who came out or went in."

Comics
Gaming
• At Dragonsfoot: "F3: Adventure in Skull Pass"
     "While trading had been robust, the caravans have recently come under attack in Skull Pass by humanoids and their ogre leader Roark. The word has been put out for adventurers and for a bounty on the humanoids! This adventure is suitable for a party of 2-4 level adventurers and is a continuation of the Filbar series."

• At DriveThruRPG: Pathways #24.
      "a FREE collection of Pathfinder templates, encounters, variant monster rules, alternative racial traits, and favored class bonuses? If you say no designer Steven D. Russell and artist Ian Greenlee will send a Lustful Rakshasa after you (though you might like that)!Rite Publishing brings you Pathways, a free 'zine packed with plenty of Open Game Content for you to take to the table."
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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Great Free Genre Fiction

More great freebies including, Comics, Audio Fiction and good old-fashioned text fiction.  And in case you missed it, be sure to check out yesterday's Wizard of Id for a droll pop culture fantasy reference.




[Art for "The Crystal Ray" by Raymond Gallum in audio fiction below]




Fiction
• At Author's Site: "Sing" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Science Fiction. 1987.
     "Well, I’d never heard the word 'sing' before and I told him so. He kinda frowned and said it was the only word he couldn’t find a translation for. That word and a couple others he called 'related,' as if words could share blood like people do."

• At The Black Gate "The Sealord’s Successor” Part I and Part II by Aaron Bradford Starr. Fantasy.
     "This minor discomfort (which grew steadily less minor as the journey continued) served admirably to distract me from the terrifying drops and bottomless chasms to which we traveled so close. A single slip by one of our runners could send us plummeting, but Gloren and Yr Neh seemed quite unconcerned. How brave they were! But perhaps they knew what to expect of the Otrock Line."

• At The Colored Lens: "Eight of Swords – Part 2" by Darja Malcolm-Clarke. Speculative Fiction.
     "After class, she gave Chris an excuse about studying for the next day’s chemistry test so she wouldn’t meet him in town. He peered at her as if trying to detect animosity in her. But she had sealed herself off from him, as she always did when they got this way; she wouldn’t let him know anything, despite his claim that he was able to read her."

• At Cosmos: "Soul Song" by Frankie Seymour. Science Fiction.
     "Antarctica itself is still pretty spectacular, even with so much of the snow and permafrost gone. Valleys and vast plains of newly seeded green – not planted by humans; nature has done it all by herself."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Gullible Georgina Agravaine" by Michael J Greenhut.
     "The sheriff asked me to believe that a telephone call turned Georgina Agravaine into a werewolf. Evidently, the caller suggested that she might be one, and that's when the trouble started."

• At Lightspeed: "Three Days of Rain" by Holly Phillips.Science Fiction.
     "They came down out of the buildings’ shade into the glare of the lakeside afternoon. Seen through the sting of sun-tears, the bridge between Asuada and Maldino Islands wavered in the heat, white cement floating over white dust, its shadow a black sword-cut against the ground."

• At Lightspeed: "The Bolt Tightener" by Sarena Ulibarri. Fantasy.
    “There are one thousand eight hundred bolts total,” the old man said. “You’ll work every night until sunrise. Always go in order. Never skip a bolt.”

• At Strange Horizons: "Town's End" by Yukimi Ogawa. Speculative Fiction.
       "For five years in the city I worked as a receptionist at an English language school, where I had to deal with countless, groundless complaints and had developed a Noh-mask on my face devoid of any real expression. But even that was nothing to fight against this."

E-Book Shorts
At Smashwords:
Flash Fiction
  • At Quantum Muse: "Ambition" by Harris Tobias.
  • At Strange Horizons: "Bang" by Stefon Mears. Speculative Poem.
  • At 365 Tomorrows: "Almost Human" by George R. Shirer. Science Fiction.
Audio Fiction
• At Lightspeed: "The Bolt Tightener" by Sarena Ulibarri. Fantasy.
     Described Above.

• At Protecting Project Pulp: "The Crystal Ray" by Raymond Gallum. Science Fiction.
      "From the bow of one of America’s ships a beam of bluish light stabbed out and struck an enemy craft. It passed thru the vessel as tho it had been made of glass instead of thousands of tons of steel." - first published in Air Wonder Stories, November, 1929.

• At Strange Horizons: "Town's End" by Yukimi Ogawa. Speculative Fiction.
     Described Above.

Comics
Other Genres
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