Tuesday Frrebies

Even more good free reading than usual. There's new fiction at several great sites including the always awesome Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, etc. And there's some quite good audio fiction too!  And Don;t miss
Regan Wulfrom's Free Fiction links at SF Signal (And be sure to say hi to poor Regan )

[art for Kelly Link's "Catskin" linked below]




Fiction
• At AE: "Roadkill Joe" by Milo James Fowler. Scuience Fiction.
      "Roadkill Joe is a very old soul — Can’t die cuz he’s a freak!"

• At Author's Site: "Boz" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Science Fiction.
     "Boz got his job on the colony ship The Beautiful Dreamer because he’s a competent introvert. He enjoys the fact that he’s spending years completely alone, monitoring the passengers passing the time in cold sleep. So when he wakes up one morning to Christmas carols, he gets scared. Very scared."

• At The Colored Lens: "The Wreck of the Emerald Sky – Part 2" by Sean Monaghan. Speculative Fiction.
      "He caught a loop and slipped up against the wall. It was a low thrust, perhaps five percent of a standard gee. Maneuvering thrusters."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "He Could Be Ambrose Bierce" by Shaenon Kelty Garrity.
     "On August 6, 1930," said Mona, "Justice Joseph Crater stepped into a taxi in New York City and was never seen again."

• At Interstellar Fiction: "Shuffle Town" by T. D. Edge. Science Fiction.
      "Rain lent some romance to the light blazing from the psycho-change tower above Reception but her heart trembled like a hamster away from its cage, even though she’d expected that."

• At Lightspeed: "Catskin" by Kelly Link. Fantasy.
      "Cats went in and out of the witch’s house all day long. The windows stayed open, and the doors, and there were other doors, cat-sized and private, in the walls and up in the attic. The cats were large and sleek and silent. No one knew their names, or even if they had names, except for the witch."

•  At Lightspeed: "Dreams in Dust" by D. Thomas Minton. Science Fiction.
     "The arrival of the dust-covered girl caught Keraf by surprise. The girl’s slender face, sun-beaten to a deep brown, blended seamlessly into the cloth wrapped around her head. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, but she wielded her rifle with ease."

• At Strange Horizons: "Wing" by Amal El-Mohtar. Speculative Fiction.
       "She reads—not the book around her neck, which is small, only as long and as wide as her thumb, black cord threaded through a sewn leather spine, knotted shut."

• At Weird Fiction Review: "Selections from Lives of Notorious Cooks" by Brendan Connell.
     "and then she became pregnant and gave birth to a child, but, being frightened of her father’s reaction to such an occurrence, left it in a field where it was eaten by dogs and so Apollo became angry and sent a demon dog called Poine to Argos."

• Now Posted: Yellow Mama #35. Horror. Noir.

• "Baby Boy" by AJ Hayes.
• "Like a Boss" by Michelle Ann King 
• "Santa's Crack" by Richard Godwin
• "The Flag" by Diana Ferraro 
• "Modraniht:A Fairy Tale" by Mike Kerins 
• "Holly Jolly" by Christopher Grant
• "Trimming the Tree" by Kenneth James Crist 
• "A Little Scotch Will Help" by D. S. Jones
• "The Naughty List" by Earl & Paul Dick 
• "As Filthy as the Night Is Long" by Basil Rosa 
• "Small Bites" by Chris Rhatigan 
• "On the Interstate" by Kip Hanson 
• "Ten Months" by Mark Hendry 
• "Out of Juice" by Cindy Rosmus 
• "The Night's Rainbow" by Ali Znaidi 
• "The Hounds Within My Property" & "Lonely" by ayaz daryl nielsen 
• "Apricots, Figs & In This Room" by Lyn Lifshin 
• "Sandy & Winnie" by Meg Baird
• "Facts about Bones & More than Oxygen" by Christopher Hivner 
• "Rare Days & Teardrop" by Marc Carver.

Flash Fiction

• At Flashes in the Dark: "Ovidia’s Metamorphosis" by Patricia Court. Horror.
• At Strange Horizons: "End Times" by Sarah Terry. Speculative Poetry.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Tariff" by Jae Miles. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Lightspeed: "Dreams in Dust" by D. Thomas Minton. Science Fiction.
      Described above.

• At 19 Nocturne Boulevard: "Warp'd Stories #3, Top Story, Chapter 4" by Julie Hoverson.
       "Sometimes a wing man is a bad thing. And sometimes inviting a new friend up for food just means dinner."

• At Protecting Project Pulp: “The Tree of Life” Part 2 of 2. by C. L. Moore. Science Fiction.
      "A queer, penetrating light shining upon his closed eyes roused Smith by degrees into wakefulness again. He lifted heavy lids and stared upward into the unwinking eye of Mars’ racing nearer moon. He lay there blinking dazedly for a while before enough of memory returned to rouse him. Then he sat up painfully, for every fiber of him ached, and stared round on a scene of the wildest destruction."

• At Toasted Cake: "Anything Chocolate" by Caren Gussoff.
     "No description found"

Other Genres

• Audio Fiction at Bound Off: "Our Trip to the Moon" by Bob Thurber and "Driving Lesson" by Natasha Fish.
• Audio Fiction at Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine:  "A Good Man of Business" by David Ingram. Mystery.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "Wasteland Gallery" by Chris Schramm. Literary.

Nina Kiriki Hoffman, QD is Safe, and More

Some fantastic free fiction to start the day.  There are a pair of stories by genre great Nina Kiriki Hoffman, a pair of stories at Lightspeed, and many more free fiction stories. There are also great audio stories, including a classic Robert Bloch story from Weird Tales.  And flas fiction for a bit of icing on the cake. Special thanks to Old Miser for a pair of links.

If you happen to use Google Chrome (why???) you might be curious as to why QD is sometimes listed as potentially dangerous.  QD is not now, nor has it ever been a dangerous site.  Because a perfectly legitimate, at the time, site that QD linked to years ago has since then apparently become "listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer," QD still sometimes gets a red flag. And even though the QD no longer even links to that site (all old links were deleted), you may still get a warning - don't fear, QD will never host, nor knowingly link to, any dangerous, illegal, or immoral* sites.  [Thanks to John D for the heads up about this issue]

* Immoral is subjective but QD will not link to porn, politics, or real hate speech.

More later - I hope (I have at least one link to steal from Regan)
 

Fiction
At AE: "The Mugger's Hymn" by  Julian Mortimer Smith.
      "John Gunn crept down Fumblers Alley all jagged nerves and awkward stealth. He hadn’t slept a wink in a week. He had kept himself awake with hits of pirate nicotine and splintery, shivery adrenaline. He knew that if he slept he would lose the tune, that better-than-certainty, that unthinking faith in the world."

At The Colored Lens: "Diffusion – Part 1" by Andrew Tisbert. Urban Fantasy. Slipstream.
     "No, these images were from the inside, through his clones’ eyes, evoking a different kind of terror. Some hit suddenly—a bright flash of light, a burst of pain shearing mercifully off into nothing. Others took time. His heart thumping out blood like a cavitating oil pump."

At Daily Science Fiction: "The Key to Everything" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman.
     "My special talent was pissing people off. That wasn't the technical term for it, but that was what I was good at. You would think there wouldn't be much demand for this talent. That would be you, wrong again." 

At Eclipse Online: "Firebugs" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman.
      “Esta, can you explain why you set that bush on fire?” Creche Mother Makis asked us.  Two of her sibs flanked her on the judgment bench.  All three stared at us, their faces expressionless, identical.  Hawk noses, narrow mouths, deep-set eyes under heavy brows, their hair hidden under the white hoods of their judgment robes."

At Electric Velocipede: "The Night We Drank Cold Wine" by Megan Kurashig.
       "I don’t ask anymore, but Rhodes always explains. If I decide to pick up the phone, he will tell me a story of unexpected coincidences to make me laugh; and I will hardly believe it, even though I know his stories always turn out to be true."

At Lightspeed: "A Game of Rats and Dragon" by Tobias S. Buckell. Science Fiction.
      "Moonlighting as a non-player character was a hell of a way to earn a living. Never made much sense to spend all that time garbing up in a virtual uniform that matched gamespace, but Overton took pride in the details."

At Lightspeed: "Seven Smiles and Seven Frowns" by Richard Bowes.Fantasy.
      "Each time I find a new apprentice in these times of trouble, I remember being a girl of twelve, getting close to thirteen. The other lads and maidens my age were already starting to pair off."

At Mindflights: "Asperges Me, Domine" by Ashley Bobo. Fantasy.
      "She first noticed him when he tripped over a log, and she caught sight of the symbol of St. Bramwell, a silver cross with sharp points, on the hem of his robe. He was too young to be a full monk, but if he knew where the saint’s burial place was…"

At Weird Fiction Review: "The White" by Berit Ellingsen.
     "Last year one of the professor’s PhD students froze to death just fifty meters from the base. In a blizzard, he failed to find his way from the infrared observatory to the housing unit. It must have been difficult for the professor to notify the student’s parents."

Flash Fiction

• At Author's Site: "The Taste of Miracles" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Science Fiction.
• At Enchanted Conversation: "A Queen's Discontent" by Marcia Sherman. Fairy Tale Poem.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The Lady Is Not" by Jae Miles. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
At Cast of Wonders:  "The Great Game, Part 6 – When Stars Fall" by James Vachowski. YA.
       "What? A meteor? Don’t be a dunce, child, there’s no such thing. That was a star falling from the heavens, as sure as I’m alive. But draw the curtains now, if you please. A single shooting star is an omen of luck, but seeing several foretells death."

At Dunesteef: "Todd Elrin And The Forever Reset" by Jonathan C. Gillespie.
     "It’s the last day of the year, and it’s time for Todd Elrin to leave his current location, and start the year over somewhere else, as he has done many times this particular calendar year. But an angry visitor from the future has other plans."

At Lightspeed: "A Game of Rats and Dragon" by Tobias S. Buckell. Science Fiction.
see above.

At Protection Project Pulp: "Fane of the Black Pharaoh" by Robert Bloch. Weird.
      "Captain Carteret bent forward and peered at the queer, metallic thing. His thin, usually pale face now glowed with unconcealed excitement. He grasped the black object with twitching fingers."

Other Genres
Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "A Blessing for Brothers" by Craig Fishbane.

Many Good Free Stories

Quite a few good stories today from many great sites. Thanks to OldMiser for the heads up about the latest Eclipse Online story.  And don't miss the free fiction roundup at SF Signal.




Fiction
At AE: "Tough Crowd" by Holly Schofield. Science Fiction.
     “Hey, Ship? How about this one: A skeleton walks into a bar and says, ‘Give me a beer and a mop.’”
At Daily Science Fiction:  "The Chosen One" by Huston Lowell.
     "Singh watched with a skeptical eye as the little boy came woohooing down the cyclone slide. Could this be the snotty nose of the Chosen One?"
At Eclipse Online: "One Little Room an Everywhere" by K.J. Parker. Fantasy [via OldMiser]
     “Well now,” he said, giving me a sad smile. “What on earth are we going to do with you?” A valid question, to which I’ve never been able to think of an answer. “I thought,” I lied, “maybe teaching?” He shook his head slowly. “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” he said. “It takes a [...]
At Lightspeed: "The Suicide’s Guide to the Absinthe of Perdition" by Megan Arkenber. Fantasy.
     "You cannot stop an angel who truly wants to fall. This is the first thing you learn in Pandemonium. The second thing you learn in Pandemonium is how to drink absinthe."
At Lightspeed: "Bear and Shifty" by Benjamin Parzybok. Science Fiction.
      "I ambled around the side of the after-market armored minivan and helped Mr. and Mrs. Perkinson load in the rest of the grocery goods, stashing them in the back and strapping them down. They were going to have a hell of a ride home, we all knew it, so when the work was done, I lingered there."
At Tor.com:  "The Terrible Old Man" by H.P. Lovecraft. Horror. 1921.
     "The inhabitants of Kingsport say and think many things about the Terrible Old Man which generally keep him safe from the attention of gentlemen like Mr. Ricci and his colleagues, despite the almost certain fact that he hides a fortune of indefinite magnitude somewhere about his musty and venerable abode."
At Tor.com:  "Too Fond" by Leanna Renee Hieber. Horror.
     "Eloise Browne's leaden heart becomes softened by the entrance into her world of Mr. McGill, the owner of the nearby mill. His tragic story and her compassionate gift tangle themselves into something altogether new... and not altogether welcome."
At World SF Blog: "Don’t Move a Muscle, Mr. Liberty" by Jordan Ellinger.
     "Crumpled leather the colour of a fisherman’s tan, it sits on its head in the middle of the cobblestone plaza. It is a great fisher of men, my hat. It sweeps up passing tourists and holds them before me, their jowls hanging loose like gasping catfish as I ply my trade"

Flash Fiction
At Every Day Fiction:  "Hunted" by Paul A. Freeman. Fantasy. Horror.
At Strange Horizons: "Torah and Secular Learning" by Bogi Takács. Speculative Poetry.
At 365 Tomorrows: "Food Chain" by Jae Miles. Science Fiction.


Audio Fiction
At Lightspeed: "The Suicide’s Guide to the Absinthe of Perdition" by Megan Arkenber. Fantasy.
At PodCastle: "Unpossible" by Daryl Gregory. Fantasy.
     "Twenty feet from the far wall his way is blocked by a heap of wicker lawn furniture. He pulls apart the barricade piece by piece to make a narrow passage and scrapes through, straws tugging at his shirt. On the other side he crawls up and onto the back of a tilting oak desk immovable as a ship run aground."
At PodCastle: Miniature #72. "The Best Worst Monster" by Peter S. Beagle. Fantasy.

Other Genres
Audio at LibriVox: "An Outcast Of The Islands" by Joseph Conrad. Classic. Adventure.
Audio at Protecting Project Pulp: “Kali” by Eric Taylor. Noir.
Audio at Tales of Old: "Memories of Light and Sound" by Steven Saus. Historic. Ellis Island.

Free Fiction, Audio Fiction, and Comics

 More great free fiction, including a couple of complete magazines, some comics and much more. I should note that SF Signal has its latest awesome Free Fiction Roundup online, and while many listings have appeared here already, many others have not. So do yourself a favor and check it out too.  The first QD Review (since its rebirth) should be up tonight or tomorrow - as soon as I can find a few more synonyms for putrid. (Kudos if anyone guesses which recently released blu-ray it is).




 


Magazines
Bourbon Penn #5 [via SF Signal]
     "Everything You Were Looking For" by Samantha Henderson.
     "American Marsupial" by Clifford Garstang.
     "On That Time We Crossed" by Sam Duda.
     "The Rustic Ladder" by Daniel Ausema.
     "Day of the Creamsicles" by Don Raymond.
     "Faded Dreams of Division Street" by Wayne Allen Sallee.
     "Lucky" by Jeffrey Wooten.


The Future Fire Issue 2012.24  [via SF Signal]
     ‘Je me souviens’ by Su J. Sokol.
     ‘Secrets of the Sea’ by Jennifer Marie Brissett.
     ‘The Harpy’by Laura Heron.
     ‘Safecracker, Safe’by J.C. Hsyu/
     ‘Arrow’ by Barry King.
     ‘Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods’ by Benjanun Sriduangkaew.

Fiction

At Black Gate:  “The Duelist” by Jason E. Thummel. [via SF Signal]
At Buzzy Mag: "And Down Will Come Baby, Madmen And All" by Damien Walters.
At Buzzy Mag: "Blue Tag Sale" by Beth Cato.
At Daily Science Fiction: "From the Divide" by Nathan Tavare.
At Daily Science Fiction: "Blood Oranges" by K.C. Shaw.
At Lightspeed: "Flowing Unimpeded to the Enlightenment" by Robert Reed.
At Lightspeed: "Spindles" by L.B. Gale.
At Paizo:  Chapter One of "Proper Villains" by Erik Scott de Bie.
At Philippine Genre Stories: "Retokado" by Kyra Ballesteros.

Audio
At Beware the Hairy Mango: "Faster Food" by Matthew Sanborn Smith.
At LibriVox: Short Poetry Collection #112, which has a couple of poems that fit in well here - "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe and Tennyson's wonderful Arthurian poem "The Lady of Shalott"
At Lightspeed: "Flowing Unimpeded to the Enlightenment" by Robert Reed.
At StarShipSofa:  "The Man Who Built Heaven" by Keith Brooke.
At Tales to Terrify:  "The Threads" by Christopher Fowler.
At Tales to Terrify #37: "The Hound" by H.P. Lovecraft  and "Once Seen" by Conrad Williams.

Comics
At Atomic Kommie Comics: "Famous Explorers: Ceres" SF.
At Digital Comics Museum:  Captain Midnight UK 100 (US#50). SF.
At Digital Comics Museum:  Jumbo Comics 109. Adventure.
At Diversions of the Groovy Kind: "The Metamorph"  SF.
At Four-Color Shadows: "A Hole on His Head" Horror.

Great Free Fiction, Comics, and More.

Some really impressive fiction (Fom SF to YA Fantasy to Weird) from some of the big sites today (Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Subterranean, ChiZine, etc.) another large collection of Flash Fiction, Cool Comics, including a ton at Digital Comics Museum, and some good audio including PodCastle fantasy and other great ones. Maybe a review later today.

Today's Illustration is from "Lifelong Companion" in the comics section.







@Lightspeed Magazine: "Bibi from Jupiter" by Tessa Mellas.
"She’s sitting at her desk already, reading the student handbook. I double-check the room number. 317. I’ve got the right place. This is my roommate." [author profile here]


@Strange Horizons: "Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984)" by Grant Stone.
"When she gets it right, it will signal the mothership. If there's a mothership. She thinks there's a mothership, but the smile she gives him, trembling slightly at the corners, shows she's not completely sure."

@Subterranean Press: "The Ghost Party" by Richard Larson.
“I don’t want to go,” said Charlee as she rode in the passenger seat of the old Bronco through the dark and quiet streets outside of her tiny, depressing town. Even though by now she actually did want to go.

@The author's site: "Geeks Bearing Gifts" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. (2009) Online 1 week.
"Bethanne Dupree did not know a lot about mythology. In fact, what she knew, prior to what she later called The Event, her employees called The Incident, and her customers called The Class Action Suit, were a handful of names."

@ChiZine:
"The Word of God" by Nir Yaniv.
"Ofer searched through his pockets like a man possessed. “A pen!” he said. “My kingdom for a pen!” and immediately found one, in the pocket of his shirt, and when he returned home discovered that the door refused to open."

"The Dilkey Never Landed" by Paul Tremblay.
"Wrapped in her black, casino-issued, form-fitting suit, the Juong says, “Drink or snack, sir?” Gnarly, fried Oasis roots, or dilkies as us Chooms like to call ’em, battle bottles of Zub and Knickerson beer for space on her tray."

"Late Night Pick-Up" by Peter Crowther.
"'It’ll be okay, just tell us the whole thing from the top,' he says with a slight lisp, folding his hands calmly and carefully on the desk in front of him.."

"Suckling" by Patricia Russo.
“Candace,” said Joshua, “I think there’s something on my foot.”

"Beer on Sunday" by Nick Mamatas.
"The day after the Rapture, Tommy goes looking for his bookie Newsboy Shaw, but he isn’t nowhere to be found. He ain’t in the park and weren’t loitering by the newsstand neither."

@Daily Science Fiction: "Starlight Cantata" by Brian Lawrence Hurrel
"Jump flash, blinding but brief. Alpha Centauri A swims into view. It takes only a few minutes after our emergence into realspace for the receiver to align itself with Earth. A long burst of static roars, fades."

Serial Fiction
@Ray Gun Revival: "The Princess – part two" by Robert Mancebo.
“We got warships on our tail. We took a torpedo or somethin’ amidships. Stay in your cabin with the hatch sealed in case we’re hit again.”

@Legend of the Five Rings: "The Destroyer War - Part 10" by Shawn Carman. (or here)
"The ongoing saga of the Emerald Empire’s desperate war against the invading forces of Kali-ma, as determined by the results of our Kotei season tournaments."

Reviewed and Linked
@BestScienceFictionStories.com: "Orange" by Susan Forest (2010) is reviewed with a link to a free online version.
"At four o’clock in the morning, when the explosions were fewer and some dozed on the step, SpaceCorp’s main door opened briefly. She, and a couple of dozen others, managed to squeeze in without being trampled before the door locked."

@Marooned - Science Fiction & Fantasy books on Mars: Links to free online versions of six of the stories in the upcoming Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction.









@19 Nocturne Blvd: "Castle Makeover" by Julie Hoverson.
"When Moderna Home Makeover International comes to "improve" the castle of Professor Ludvig, they find more than they expected."





@PodCastle: PodCastle #156 "Household Spirits" by C.S.E. Cooney, read by Bob Eccles and Brian Lieberman.
"This here’s ghost country, just like you said. Can’t imagine a more haunted place on all Athanore, no, nor at the bottom of the nine seas where the nine old cities fell. Frontier, we call it."

@Beware the Hairy Mango: Weird, often gross, flash audio by Matthew Sanborn Smith.

• Episode 58 – "The Surge"
• Episode 57 – "Eat Me"
• Episode 56 – "Squeezing One Out"

Classic Serial Audio
@Triplanetary: The Adventures of Superman "Atom Man In Metropolis" parts 5-8.







@Strange Horizons: [Poem] "Telling Deaths" by Lila Garrott.
@365 tomorrows: "ExaByte" by Aradhana Choudhuri.
@Weirdyear: "Wawa and Wato" by Will Johnson.
@The New Flesh: "Immaculate Conception" by Kirk Jones.
@The New Flesh: "Stupid Measles" by Georges Dodds .
@ChiZine.com:

• "Queen Choufa Protects the Drones from the Wrath of Arash-keen" by Elizabeth Barrette.
• "Jared Sumac poisons the whole damn lot of ’em" by Samuel Minier.
• "14:46" by A. M. Muffaz.
• "Midnight is a Time for Listening" by Lon Prater.
• "Eidolons of the Moon" by J. E. Stanley.
  

@Diversions of the Groovy Kind: "Lifelong Companion" SciFi.
@The Horrors of It All: "The Madman's Music / The Storm!" Horror.
@ Pencil Ink: "Phantom Fliers" from Out of the Night #4 (1952). Horror.
@Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine: A "Land of the Lost" story (1946) Children's fantasy - not the cool 70's series.
@The Comic Book Catacombs: Camilla in "The Flame Queen and the Witchman" Adventure.
@Grantbridge Street: "The Weirdest Character I've Ever Known!" Horror ["R" rated site]
@Atomic Kommie Comics: Part one of "Barbarella"
@Secret Sanctum of Captain Video: "The Last Moonrise"
@Digital Comics Museum: In CBR downloads Fight Comics #58, Fight Comics #50, Fight Comics #43, Jungle Comics #136, Jungle Comics #127, Jungle Comics #124, Jungle Comics #121, Black Magic #15 [UK reprint-b&w], Eerie #7 [UK reprint-b&w], Fight Comics #4, and Thrilling Comics #61. Adventure and Horror.

Wednesday Freebies (Fiction, Flash Fiction, Audio Fiction, and Gaming)

Free SF, Fantasy, and Horror. Enough said.










@The author's site: "Red Man" by Scott Sigler.
"It’s as if she’s tuned out everything but me. I’m a focus for hatred born from protective, aggressive fear for her child."

@Lightspeed Magazine: "The Harrowers" by Eric Gregory.
"Christ, I thought. And then: Of course—P.K.: Preacher’s Kid. Should’ve caught that earlier. I finished off the Yanjing, then opened the cooler and unscrewed a jar of whiskey. I’d heard of harrowers before, but never met one alive"

@Subterranean Press: "Queen of Atlantis" by Sarah Rees Brennan.
"The poison tides came in one burnt evening in late summer, and everybody knew it was time for the princess to be sacrificed."

Classic SF
@Munseys and Project Gutenberg: "Rich Living" by Michael Cathal, from Science Fiction (Feb. 1955).
"No other planet in the entire Galaxy was at all like Rejuvenal ... it was the only world worth one's whole fortune for a short visit!"

Serial Fiction
@Legend of the Five Rings: "The Destroyer War, Part 9" by Shawn Carman.
"Kakita Hideshi’s arm was numb to the shoulder, but he did not pause in his kata. The ranks of the Destroyers were noticeably thinner, with many of the beasts having been killed or retreated from the fierce fighting near the heart of the village."

Reviewed
@BestScienceFictionStories.com: "I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You In Reno" by Vylar Kaftan (2010). Reviewed with a link to the free story.






@StarShipSofa: Episode #187 featuring "Larisa Miusov" by Lucius Shepard.
"He would tell me stories. I think now they were true. They all take place in a huge room, an underground room bigger than a city, with machines and laboratories…but no walls dividing them. And always there were prisoners. Hundreds of prisoners."

@PodCastle: Episode #155 "Tending the Mori Birds" by Caroline M. Yoachim, read by Rajan Khanna.
"A Mori bird waited for him on the railing, its claws wrapped around the wood. The dying light accentuated the patch of red feathers at the base of its slender neck, the only color on an otherwise black bird."

@Dunesteef: Episode #101 "Becoming Brother" by Leo Godin.
"Billy is an outer, the lowest of the low. No respect from anyone. When his mother sends him out to gather weemer mushrooms for a recipe she’s cooking up, he has no idea just how much his life will be changing."

@Lightspeed: "The Harrowers" by Eric Gregory, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.
See above in fiction.

@Cast Macabre: "Going West" by Elizabeth Creith. Horror.

@Lovecraft eZine: "The Rats in the Walls" by H. P. Lovecraft. Horror. Audio Drama.

• @Flashes in the Dark: "Lessons" by Lori Titus.
• @365 tomorrows: "Flare"by Asher Wismer.
• @Weirdyear: "The Man Who Fell Out of His Head" by Evander Arnage.
• @Daily Science Fiction: "Q is for Quit" by Tim Pratt, Jenn Reese, Heather Shaw, and Greg van Eekhou.
  

Signs and Portents #92 is available for free download with highlights including:
Traveller - "A sequel to Otherworld Blues."
Lone Wolf - "While escorting dangerous criminals, the players find their ship wrecked by a storm..."
RuneQuest II - "A haunted gulch for any RuneQuest setting."




Other Gaming Gems

• @Daddy Grognard: "An Adventure for Every Monster - Black Pudding"
• @A Field Guide to Doomsday: [Monsters] "Sluggernaut" and "Prowlasite" Mutant Future.
• @Zalchis: [Table] "Damned Things From the Skies"
• @Sea of Stars [Magic Item] "Hovering Hornet Bolts"
• @The Savage AfterWorld: [weapon] "Chainsaw Nunchucks"
• @A Character for Every Game: [Spells] "Elven Warder Magics"
• @Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [Magic Item] "Teeth of the Great Lizards"
• @Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [Spell] "Shadowleash"