Get Ready to Reeeeeaaaaaaadddd . . . Free Speculative Fiction

There's already a lot of good free fiction with a new story by Ken Liu, a new issue of Quantum Muse, new episodes of  PodCastle and Red Panda Adventures, and much more. And yes, there's more to come.


[Art from "The Two Sisters" linked below]





Fiction
• At Aurora Wolf: "The Children’s Crusade" by Tom Howard.
     "The big house on top of the mountain looked as busy as an anthill someone had stirred with a stick.  Family and friends arrived day or night, asking about Jimmy’s mama.  She was in the hospital.  They gave Jimmy and his little sister sorrowful looks, followed by a pat or hug as they moved on to console their dad."

• At Enchanted Conversations: "The Two Sisters" by Loni Klara. Fairy Tale.
     "Not a single soul could be seen treading the paths of the small lonely village in which our ghastly tale will ensue. It was a dreary day with no radiant sun to light the path and no sweet music coming from the households. Quite easy to presume then, that the occupants were obviously not in the mood for lively instruments on this specific day. Alas, the wind blew strongly over the houses, drowning any sound that may entail from within, and carrying its force to the sea nearby, which was quite a rising tempest."

• At GigaNotoSaurus: "The Litigatrix" by Ken Liu.
      "The old man, Hae-wook Lee, had been bedridden for months. He lay on the sleeping mat, wrapped in a blanket. The drugs helped him sleep, and forget about the harsh words of his son."

• At Kasma SF: "HCV 541-35-1998" by Bernard J. Hughes.
      "You walk down the garage ramp of 1600 SW Second Avenue. As you walk past the cars parked there, you remember the old Porsche dealership that had stood there where you were a child. You get near the elevators. You are dressed in a nice, professional, off-the-rack black suit, a plaid scarf in the colors of Autumn, a specially modified pair of gloves, and a stocking cap. You dip your gloved-hand in the pocket of your coat."

Now Posted: Quantum Muse - August 2013 Edition

• "The Void" by Harris Tobias. Science Fiction.
     "A time traveler rescues his infant self from his own troubled past."
• "Lyranova" by Alex Mair. Science Fiction
     "At the speed of light, the slightest trouble can wreck an interstellar mission"
• "The Bridal Party" by Christopher Lepock. Alternative.
     "A father must defend his daughter against a paranormal horror."
• "Love Through A Glass Darkly" by Alex Mair. Science Fiction.
      "Five lovers Search for companions in a theocratic world. Can their love survive the attempts to destroy it?"

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Squeak" by Emma Osborne. Fantasy.
• At Horrors in the Dark: "Hi There, Sweetie" by Michael Johnston. Horror.
• At Nature: "The Best of Us" by Lee Hallison. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Decoder Ring Theater:  "Red Panda Adventures (96) - The End of the Beginning" Superhero. Noir.
         "The waiting is almost over at last. The preperations have been made, the plans laid, and the allied nations stand ready to strike a blow for freedom on a scale never before seen in human history. One piece remains on the chessboard that can doom it all, and only one man has the power to stand against it. But will it take everything he has and more to stop Hitler's God of War"

• At PodCastle: "Nightfall in the Scent Garden" by Claire Humphrey. Fantasy.
     "If you read this, you’ll tell me what grew over the arbor was ivy, not wisteria. If you are in a forgiving mood, you’ll open the envelope, and you’ll remind me how your father’s van broke down and we were late back. How we sat drinking iced tea while the radiator steamed."

Old Time Radio
• At Journey Into: "The Martian Crown Jewels" by Poul Anderson (from Seeing Ear Theater) 
      "There is only one Martian who can help Inspector Gregg solve the mystery of the missing Martian crown jewels: Syaloch, a seven foot bird-like being who has taken on the methods of Sherlock Holmes."

Other Genres

• Audio at American Radio Theater: "Pat Novak for Hire - The Search for Lola Madden" Noir.
• Audio at Decoder Ring Theater: "Crogan Adventures 05 - Incomplete Sentences"
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "Wheat" by A. Cochrane

More Cool Free E-Zines

Another great batch of free fiction as a few more good free fiction e-zines are up online.  All are worth checking out because each is unique, quite good, and best of all free! And don't miss all the flash fiction from several varied sites.  And there's some good audio fiction for when your eyes fall out from over-reading.











Fiction

Now Posted: Expanded Horizons #38 Speculative Fiction.

"Scales as Pale as Moonlight" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

      "A child wailed in the dark, in the scrubland. The serpent screams like that as it waits in the thickets. Laura opened the window and stood still, listening. The cry did not repeat itself."

"He Can Pull Out of the Soil and Walk Away" by EA Hopson.

        "I look up and see the dog playing with a dropped branch in the drive. He is shaking it back and forth, trying to break the imaginary neck beneath the bark. It takes me a full two minutes to realise that it’s not a branch at all, but a broken prong from the antlers of the moose they towed away this morning."

At Fear and Trembling: "A Fixer-Upper" by Mark Silcox. Horror. Ghost.

      "It was the sort of road that might have been frightening to travel in the dark. It turned and wound to and fro through the rugged countryside like a weird carnival ride. The hedges on either side were unruly and hopping with life, and there certainly wasn’t enough space for two cars to pass alongside one another without incident."

Now Posted: Fusion Fragment #19

"The Crows Dance While The Baby Cries" by Daniel Davis. Science Fiction.
       "Some sort of vision Portholes occasionally experienced, potent enough to be depicted on the medallion, mysterious enough to garner only a few mentions in official research. No explanation was known, though it had been hypothesized that the drug affected the human mind in some primal way, going back thousands of years, to when fears and joys and all of life's experiences were basic. A shared hallucination.

"Every Breath You Take" by Don Norum. Science Fiction.
       "The lady on the television said that she could sense them. $3.99 a minute, she'd tell you where they were. Bathroom, bedroom, kitchen - how many, what they were doing, what they looked like."

"Evaporated Government" by John Skylar. Science Fiction.
        "Apparently I am the President of the United States of America. It's not something I've processed all the way yet."

Now Posted Interstellar Fiction Dec. 2012:  Science Fiction.

"Cold Pride" by James K. Isaac. Science Fiction.
      "Quinn was impulsive; according to the assessment of his masters anyway. But he dismissed their words as “the counter intuitive judgments of those who had been too long out the field.” His masters were old, unlike Brother Quinn who possessed both youth and talent, who was gifted with speed of foot and mind, a quick study."
"One Good Turn" by Edward H. Park. Science Fiction.
      "Michael didn’t sense anything wrong until he was almost back to the ship. He had no communications with the rest of the crew when his orbit took him to the other side of the planet, of course, but even when the ship showed up again on the scanner he didn’t bother to call in. He was still going over the data gathered on the planet’s tiny moon."
"Maximum Law" by Martin Clark. Science Fiction.
      "Rolling in the deep, wired to the max. Adele playing on Retro FM, Jim driving, me hugging the 12-gauge to my chest, head bobbing in time to the beat. We were both fired up on Godz — methamphetamine with a ketamine bumper — and feeling pretty damn invincible."

Now Posted: Quantum Muse: December 2012 Edition.

"Beyond the Rift" by Jeromy Henry. Fantasy.
      "Everyone who tries the ritual ends up insane or altered into something... unpleasant. But Jed has nothing to lose. Can he be the first one to master magic? Will he unlock the secrets of the world, or destroy it?" 
"Grulym" by Astrid Nielsen. Fantasy.
     "Dark forces are at work in the city of Grulym, and Raduz, an exiled doctor, is unkowingly tied to the changes aubout to happen."
"Paradoxical" by Impotent Verse. Science Fiction.
     "What is stranger, the notes Jack finds tucked inside his library books, or that he takes their messages very seriously?"
"Eye of the Trapped Animal" by Gordon Rowlinson. "Alternative"
      "What would you do if you had an out of body experience and witnessed a crime. You couldn't prove it."

Now Posted: Perihelion - Dec. 2012:  Science Fiction.

"Who By Fire" by Jeff Samson. Science Fiction.
      "THE LIFT DESCENDS, GRINDING and shuddering down the station’s spine. Through the smoky glass doors I watch the hangar names slide across my line of sight in thick, jet-black characters crosshatched with colors that change from level to level. They shift from cool purples and blues to warm greens and ambers to hot rusts and reds, their palette specified long ago by some methodical, color-minded engineer."
Shit Eatin’ Dog by Bob Sojka. Science Fiction.
      "The spacecraft’s gazetteer and botanary had sparse entries for this location, and only a few features were identified with earth names. What mattered more was that the air was promisingly redolent with a blend of organic volatiles emanating from the profusion of living and decaying carbon-based life forms all about."
Joshua Who Could See by Elizabeth Streeter. Science Fiction.
     "Joshua keeps his head down, black sunglasses shielding his eyes. He focuses on nothing. The doctors taught him this technique. It will calm you, they said. Keep you from getting overwhelmed. Keep you from hurting yourself."
Calliope Muse by Rebecca L. Brown. Science Fiction.
     "CALLIOPE MUSE IS a Breeder. You can tell by the way she wears her hips; full— not shaved down widthways like all the other girlies. If not by that, then you can tell by the hang of her tits—almost down to her waist if she didn’t have that clasp contraption on and buckled up tight. Calliope Muse is a Breeder and that makes her desirable."
Waver of the Image by Joe Occhipinti. Science Fiction.
      "His eyes ran along the camber of the world, along the seam to where the arch of green grass gave way to the bend of sky. Every hundred paces or so an elbow of dull gray pipe the size of his waist jutted out of the land and plunged into the silver hue; the elbows were like stitches that cleaved the sky to the earth."
Salvation of Sam by Ellen Denton. Science Fiction.
       "IT WAS NOW TWO YEARS since Sam had gotten out of prison and been posted on Rika 4. He shook his head with disgust as he looked at the expanse of flat, brown sand stretching as far as he could see in all directions. He still had a hard time accepting that he was on some dump of a planet that didn’t even have virtual reality-escape machines. Even prisons had them these days."
Three Into Two Won’t Go by Ann Gimpel. Science Fiction.
       "CORINA TROTTED SMARTLY down the well-worn dirt track. She’d gotten a shred off course, but astute orienteering had fixed that. The angle of the sun was a bit of a puzzle. She didn’t see how it could have shifted to the western sky so quickly. And she was worried about Josh. What had happened to him? One minute they’d been together, the next she was walking by herself, feeling out of it."
3rd Dragoon Regiment and the Liberation of Contagor’e-Mare by Don C. Ciers. Science Fiction.
       "Our timing is perfect, Commodore. Balesti and Aipian are at aphelion. ESR shows 17 civilian transports in orbit of Aipian and her moons and stations, half of them are running cold. Even if they power up in time they won’t reach the 9-3 lanes before we do,” the S-3 asserted."
Collector’s Item by Doug Donnan. Science Fiction.
      “A hundred bucks? Why that’s highway robbery,” Mandelbrite replied as he waved his pudgy hands aloft like some crazed televangelist. “I don’t think you realize the potential of this little robot.”

 Flash Fiction

• At Expanded Horizons: "A New Word" by Rachel Manija Brown. Fantasy Poem.
• At Fear and Trembling:  "Song of the Frogs" by M. T. Nagel. Horror.
• At Fear and Trembling: "Unprepared" by Celesta Thiessen. Zombies.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Two’s a Crowd" by Tom Coupland. Science Fiction.
• At Antipodean: Speculative Fiction:

"Faerie Blues" by Chris Andrews.
"Corporate Body" by D.W. Walker.
"The Past Is A Good Place" by Antoinette Rydyr.
"Solipsism" by Kevin J. Phyland.
"Dogtrap" by Dr. Michael Schaper.

Audio Fiction
At Beam Me Up:  Episode #342. Science Fiction and Fact.
    Featuring part 4 of Poul Anderson’s "Call Me Joe" and "Make Mine a Macchiato" by Mark Webb. As well as science news and commentary.

At Cthulhu: The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson (Parts 8 & 9) Horror.
      "I suppose I must have swooned; for, the next thing I remember, I opened my eyes, and all was dusk. I was lying on my back, with one leg doubled under the other, and Pepper was licking my ears. I felt horribly stiff, and my leg was numb, from the knee, downward. For a few minutes, I lay thus, in a dazed condition; then, slowly, I struggled to a sitting position, and looked about me."

At The Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: Episode 07 - The Return of Tarzan Adventure.
      "Tarzan’s sojourn in Paris has come to an end. Through his friendship with the Count De Coude, he has been presented with a position as special agent of the French ministry of war."

Other Genres
Audio at Tales of Old: "When Grandpa Played Baseball" Historical Fiction.
Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "Deeper" by Douglas Campbell.

Saturday Freebies

 We have quite a bit of free reading for a Saturday morning.  There's a new issue of the wonderful fantasy poetry magazine Goblin Fruit (illustrated to the left) and a new issue of the long-running Science Fiction magazine Aphelion (there's much more there than just the linked stories). There are some good sounding E-Books (hurry as the ones not at Smashwords are often only free for a very limited time).  Two great audio SF stories, the always great Escape Pod has a new episode and LibriVox has a story by the classic SF writer Poul Anderson.  And, as if that wasn't enough, there are a few flash and pulp fiction stories.  And to keep up ny evil plot to work SF Signal to death, there will almost certainly be more posts this weekend.  


Magazines
Now Posted: Goblin Fruit Autumn 2012 featuring fantasy poetry.

• "The Vigil" by Mike Allen.
• "Blueshift" by Sonya Taaffe.
• "A body that is bold to come" by Rose Lemberg.
• "Stone" by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back.
• "Feral" by Ruth Jenkins.
• "In the Sun-Sweet Desert" by Alex Dally MacFarlane.
• "lisa" by Brock Marie Moore.
• "Vigor Mortis" by C. W. Johnson.
• "The Last Wife" by Jennifer Crow.
• "Cardiomythology" by Virginia M. Mohlere.
• "Kingdom" by Rachel Dacus.

 Now Posted: Aphelion #167 Featuring Science Fiction including

• "Obscured by Madness" by Gary W. Feather.
• "From the Depth" by Sam Best.
• "The Crystal Ghost" by Matt Spencer.
• "Living the Lie " by J. I. Charles.
• "Lord of Snakes" by John Rovito.
• "Microwave" by P. C. Van Slyke.
• "In Shadows I'm Gone" by Evan Davies.
• "Indigo Puree" by Connley (Lee) Landers.
• "Sleeping Dogs Lie" by I. Verse.

E-Books
Via Pixel of Ink:  The Girls From Alcyone by Cary Caffrey. Science Fiction.
At Amazon: Alien Hunter, Star Trooper by David Scholes. Science Fiction.
At Smashwords:

• "The Lady in the Forest" by Jeanne Olivier. Fantasy. 4k.
• "Destined To Be Damned" by David Blake. Fantasy. Horror. 1k.
• "Army of Skeletons" by W. Freedreamer Tinkanesh. Urban Fantasy. 11k.
• "The Green Loch" by W. Freedreamer Tinkanesh. Urban Fantasy. 4k.
• "Mondays with Langford" by Johnny Rivas. Horror. Humor. 2k.

Flash Fiction
At 365 Tomorrows: "The Uprising" by Bruce Meyer. Science Fiction.
At Flashes in the Dark: "Hollow" by Mike McLaren. Horror.

Audio Fiction
At Escape Pod:  "Some of Them Closer" by Marissa Lingen. Science Fiction.
      "Coming back to Earth was not the immediate shock they expected it to be for me. It was something, certainly, but I’d been catching up on the highlights of the news as it cascaded back to the ship on our relativistic return trip"
At LibriVox: "The Chapter Ends" by Poul Anderson. Science Fiction.
     "Far, far in the future the Earth is still spinning around the Sun, on the edge of the galaxy, dozing in obscurity, forgotten by it's trillions of progeny and completely irrelevant."

Other Genres 
At Online Pulps Site:  "Ace Killer" by Bruce McAlester from Sky Fighters, May, 1937 and "Harlequin's Death Mask" by Lawrence Treat from Ten Detective Aces, Feb, 1941. [Pulp/Noir]

Bonus Freebies.

Due to a different work schedule next week, posts will be at night (or afternoon) instead of late morning. But that meant either I wait until late Monday to post or else link to these cool items early. Easy choice. Also I will likely be experementing with formatting next week so don't be thrown off.



Fiction
Crossed Genres has its 29th issue up. This issue has stories crossing mystery with other genres (Science Fiction or Fantasy). [via SF Signal]

"In the House of the Brelsh" by Barbara Krasnoff.
"Bett sat on the floor, shivering despite her environment suit. Her headgear was in her lap and her small pack sat next to her; these, together with just enough currency to get her to the spaceport, were everything she owned. The next transport wasn’t due for several hours yet."

"Soul of the City" by Jamie Mason.
"Capone’s guys got into a shoot-out with the demons. Again. This time it was Ba’al’s gang, up from the Fifth Circle, looking to grab a piece of the action. Word had it they’d started the ball rolling by whacking one of Capone’s soldiers in a speak-easy over on the south side."

"The Body and the Bomb" by John P. Murphy.
"Chief Constable Fatima Nouri took her motorcycle up to the clearing. It was far enough away from the blast to cut down on radiation exposure, but it was in the wilds of Sapphire’s native vegetation, out ‘in the blue’. "

"Down There" by Aaron Polson.
“The truth is, nothing scary ever came out of a basement. Except for a little mold. Or a couple rats, and that’s only if you’re a massive chickenshit,” Travis said. He was the prototypical history teacher/football coach hybrid whose body hinted a fit childhood but now carried a sizable gut. “It’s you artsy-fartsy types—all that Poe shit Aaron makes the kids read.”

"The Peculiar People" by Erik T. Johnson.
“The black witch and I have been next to each other as long as we can remember,” the black cat said. “Today the black witch looked up and saw black space everywhere above us with eighteen perfect five-pointed orange stars in it. At the same time, I opened my orange eyes and noticed the black witch gazing at the pumpkin-colored pentagrams.”

(Issue 28 - Superhero, with stories and articles by Leow Hui Min Annabeth, Tracie Welser, Nathan Crowder, Adam Israel, KB Lawrence, and Athena Andreadis, is online HERE.)


@The Author's Website: "The Bad Place" by Lincoln Crisler. a free, unpublished science fiction story in exchange for a tweet linking to the author's site.


Classic SF
@Two-Fisted Tales of True-Life Weird Romance: "The Triangle of Terror" by William F. Temple, from Weird Tales (May 1950).
"Also, he had the best library of books on the occult that I had ever come across."






@Munseys and Project Gutenberg: "The Statue" by Mari Wolf, from IF: Worlds of Science Fiction (Jan. 1953).
"There is a time for doing and a time for going home. But where is home in an ever-changing universe?"






@Munseys and Project Gutenberg: "Duel on Syrtis" by Poul Anderson, from Planet Stories (March 1951).
"Bold and ruthless, he was famed throughout the System as a big-game hunter. From the firedrakes of Mercury to the ice-crawlers of Pluto, he'd slain them all. But his trophy-room lacked one item; and now Riordan swore he'd bag the forbidden game that roamed the red deserts ... a Martian!"

@Munseys and Project Gutenberg: "The Thing in the Attic" by James Benjamin Blish, from If: Worlds of Science Fiction July 1954.
"Honath and his fellow arch-doubters did not believe in the Giants, and for this they were cast into Hell. And when survival depended upon unwavering faith in their beliefs, they saw that there were Giants, after all."


Audio Fiction
@Gypsy Audio: Twisted Tales of Faerie - Snow White in three parts (Part one, two, and three) A "twisted" retelling of the classic faerie tale. Rated PG-13.

Serial Audio
@The Author's Website: The Starter episode #9 by Scott Sigler.
"Media Day is here! Quentin's first trip in front of reporters as the starting quarterback of the Ionath Krakens turns out to be more difficult than he anticipates. We talk about the Quyth life cycle, and meet a new species (the Leekee) for the first time."

@Beam Me Up: Episode #256 featuring "episode 11 of the Dark InSpectre series by Jason Kahn and thing seem to be getting quite dicey for our favorite mind reading detective […] part one of 'In Fall' by Ted Kosmatka."

Flash Fiction
@Brain Harvest: "White Snake" by Kyle Hemmings.
@The New Flesh: "Peodius Complex" by Jack Bristow.
@365tomorrows: "Limited Options" by Steven Odhner.
@365tomorrows: "Adoption" by Harris Tobias.
@Flashes in the Dark: "The Stomping of Feet" by Lori Titus.
@Flashes in the Dark: "Essence" by Steve Toase

Gaming
@WotC: [Adventure Hooks] "Scarblade" and "Killing Ground" (4e but easily adaptable)
@Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [New Spells] "Symbiotic Curse" and "Many Hands Make Light Work"
@The Land of NOD: [Encounter] Mu-Pan - Encounter XXI.
@A Character for Every Game: [Dungeon] "The Hazardous Depths of the Shroom-Goblin Tesseract (part 2)."
@Sea of Stars: [New Magic Items] "Geras’ Cane" and "Hebe’s Cup"
@Big Ball of No Fun: [New Monsters] "Fetch," "Guarana," and "Hyter Sprite"
@Underworld Kingdom: [New Monster] "Ho-ru, the Black Lizardmen"

Free Fantasy and SF Links

As promised earlier, a few links to some very good free fiction (both print and audio) for your use.


E-Fiction
At Strange Horizons, "The Yew's Embrace," by Francesca Forrest.
"We could still see the old king's blood in the cracks in the flagstones beneath the new king's feet when he announced to us all that this was a unification, not a conquest."

Online HERE.





At Ray Gun Revival, "Proving Ground" by Gerri Leen. "Captain Jim Rutherford walked briskly to the makeshift parade ground and barked orders to the assembled survey crew. They wearily came to attention. Most looked as if they hadn’t woken up yet. This planet—the latest of many, but the farthest out the fleet had been—had a difficult atmosphere to acclimate to. Taking pity on them, he ordered parade rest."

Online HERE.



At Fantasy Magazine, "The House that Made the Sixteen Loops of Time" by Tamsyn Muir. "14 Arden Lane suffered from bad plumbing and magical build-up. There Dr. Rosamund Tilly had raised two children, bred sixteen chinchillas, and written her thesis, and because her name was on the deed had become the medium of all the house’s whims and wishes."

Online HERE.



Issue #134 of Hub is out featuring "Progeny" by Mark Morris, as welll as reviews and an interview. "So what was he here for? What was he supposed to do? Surely not that? No, please God, he wouldn’t. He just wanted all this to end. He’d rather die before he put her through that again."
In Pdf and epub downloads HERE.



Free-Online-Novels is exactly what the title suggests. Links to free, legal, online novels in such categories as Adventure, Fantasy, Horror, science Fiction, and others.

The site is HERE [via Inner City]




At Paizo.com, Pathfinder Tales, serialized fantasy fiction set in the Pathfinder RPG world. All but the final story are complete. These look very good.



The Lost Pathfinder by Dave Gross: Chapters One, Two, Three, and Four.
"That got my attention. Both the boss and I knew there'd be repercussions from our last case. We'd gotten the job done all right, but in the process we'd busted open a bigger secret. It was the kind of thing that hurt a lot of the noble houses, the sort of people who usually hire the boss. They're also the sort of people who usually hire assassins."

The Noble Sacrifice by Richard Ford: Chapters One, Two, and Three.
"They rode their horses far from the well-trodden roads of the Conerica Straits. The ancient trade routes were no longer safe, even for seasoned warriors, and the pair stuck to the labyrinthine hill paths that intersected the foot of the Aspodells' northern peaks."

Blood Crimes by J. C. Hay: Chapters One, Two, Three, and Four.
"At that, the paladin started screaming again, the hysteria that tinged his voice doing little to convince me that his faith in his goddess's protection was entirely certain. 'Has everyone gone mad? He was a vampire!'"

Certainty by Liane Merciel: Chapters One, Two, Three, and Four.
"And evil? Evil is no easier. Most criminals are only men, and stupid and frightened ones at that. But they're the easiest to punish; they've done wrong, and know it, and will pay the price."

Swamp Warden by Amber E. Scott: Chapters One and Two.
"Every soldier leaves a part of himself behind on the battlefield. Sometimes several."

The Secret of the Rose and Glove by Kevin Andrew Murphy: Chapters One, Two, Three, and Four.

Lord of Penance by Richard Lee Byers: Chapters One, Two, Three, and Four.
"And you think the gods punished you for it by pushing Melaku off the scaffold and making you miscarry? If the world worked like that, there wouldn't be a person left alive." He put a hand on her shoulder. "You're not thinking straight, and small wonder after what you've been through. Come home for a day or two—"

Guns of Alkenstar by Ed Greenwood: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six.
"'I thought you'd be eager,' Kordroun said coldly. 'You were more than a good shieldmarshal, once. You were one of the best.'"

The Ghosts of Broken Blades by Monte Cook: Chapter One, Two.
"The open field of green grass and wildflowers hid the fact that he stood upon the site of a furious battle from just a year earlier. Such battlefields covered the land of Lastwall like a pox, but it was a pox of which Roubris could make very good use with his unique talent."


Audio Fiction
At LibriVox, Short Story Collection Vol. 047 features adventure tales by Jack London, Bret Harte, Joseph Conrad, and Rudyard Kipling, but of most interest is Poul Anderson's fantasy story "The Valor of Cappen Varra" originally published in Fantastic Universe (January 1957.) "'Let little Cappen go,' they shouted. 'Maybe he can sing the trolls to sleep—'"

All are available in MP3 and ogg downloads HERE.


And Short Ghost and Horror Collection 012 featuring stories by Edgar Allen Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, and other greats. "A collection of twenty stories featuring ghoulies, ghosties, long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. Expect shivers up your spine, the stench of human flesh, and the occasional touch of wonder."

In MP3 and ogg downloads HERE.


At the Cthulhu Podcast, Episode 96, Part One of "The Spawn of Cthulhu."

In MP3 download HERE.

Another recent reading was "The Graveyard Rats"


Other Audio
At H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, Episode 70 "The Mound" Part One. A look at H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Mound" with summary, discussion, and some parts read.

Streaming and in MP3 download HERE.

Other recent episodes include "The Electric Executioner" and "The Dunwich Horror" part One, Two, Three, and Four.