This story first appeared in the 1972 collection LA TRUIE (THE SOW). This translation appeared in late February in the first issue of The Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review (formerly The Moon Milk Review). It can be read here

Thomas Owen (real name Gérald Bertot) (1910-2002) worked all his life in the management of the same flour-milling factory. He held a doctorate in criminology, and a side career in art criticism under the pseudonym Stéphane Rey. Spared service in World War II, he turned to writing mysteries for money, with the encouragement of Stanislas-André Steeman, a celebrated craftsman of Belgian noir. In TONIGHT AT EIGHT (from 1941), he introduced the police commissioner Thomas Owen—a character whose name he liked so much he later took it as his own when he embarked on what he has called his true calling, his career as a fantasist. An existential dread, one that Thomas Ligotti correctly identified (in a blurb where he name-checked Owen) as “the nightmare of being alive”, emanates from Owen’s oeuvre of several hundred stories - the best word for Owen’s fiction is unsettling. The 1984 volume THE DESOLATE PRESENCE draws from six of Owen’s seven major collections for its 22 tales, and was the only current English translation of Owen’s work available, and is currently out of print. Both of those details may soon change.

Edward Gauvin is the winner of the John Dryden Translation prize, a Clarion graduate, he has received fellowships from the NEA, the Fulbright Program, and the American Literary Translators’ Association. His volume of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s selected stories, A Life on Paper (Small Beer, 2010) won the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award. Other publications have appeared in F&SF, Podcastle, Postscripts, Conjunctions, Subtropics, and Tin House. He translates comics for Top Shelf, Self-Made Hero, Archaia, and Lerner. He also writes a monthly column on “the Weird in translation” for the VanderMeers’ Weird Fiction Review. He would also like to mention this graphic novel, Billy Fog and the Gift of Trouble Sight for lovers of the macabre “I think of it as Edward Gorey meets Calvin and Hobbes. If you like it, sequels are forthcoming!”.

Your reader this week is Pete Milan who does a lot of voice work with Pendant Audio, on their fan shows (we do a series of DC Comics-based audio dramas) and originals (I’m a writer and performer on their sci-fi serial, The Kingery, among others)…

“‘Do you know that woman?’ he asked the waiter.

The man didn’t insist. He was too happy to have escaped the evil spell.”

This story first appeared in Shock Totem #3, published a year ago.

John Haggerty is a writer living in Northern California. His stories have appeared in Confrontation, The Los Angeles Review and The Santa Monica Review, among others. He is currently at work on a novel about greed, gambling, religion, sex and death set in the deserts of Nevada. It’s a comedy!

Your reader this week is Corson Bremer. Corson has been in the business of communication for almost thirty years, spanning two continents, and as a stage actor, writer, director and voice talent, he has participated in more than 100 stage plays, readings and radio drama productions. These skills also fueled a 9-year career in radio as a presenter and as a writer, producer and voice talent for commercials, branding, audio books and video games (including RED STEEL 2).

He would like interested parties to check out the Voice Artists United Network (VAU) website (click name for link - also on Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace), where he’s an admin. It’s dedicated to very serious VO professionals. That doesn’t mean just “stars” or the very experienced VO’s, it’s for people who have already made and/or are making a real effort to break into the industry. We welcome people as members if they have a “web presence” showing that they work in or are MAKING A BIG EFFORT to work in VO (like their own voice acting website or profile on the web… even if it’s just a free one on Voice123.com or Voices.com or Bodalgo.com). Check it out and tell your friends!

“Dmitri laughed in my face. ‘Who is going to stop me? I do what I want.’ He looked out into the drizzly evening. ‘I can get you out of here. Do you want to go?’

I looked back out at the forest. It wavered in and out of focus in the rain, gray and silent. When I turned back around, Dmitri was already gone.”

This story was first published in Arcane Magazine (later renamed Arcane Sampler) in March of 2011. Jaelithe Ingold is a dark fantasy writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She used to prepare fossils for display at the Carnegie Museum and is now a retail manager. Her work has appeared in Shock Totem, Abyss & Apex and Dark Recesses.

Your reader this week is Pete Milan who does a lot of voice work with Pendant Audio, on their fan shows (we do a series of DC Comics-based audio dramas) and originals (I’m a writer and performer on their sci-fi serial, The Kingery, among others)…

“The roof of the gingerbread house has long been gone, and green mold covers the sides like a copper patina, but the air surrounding it is still sweet. Sugar gone bad with the passage of time and the death of its caretaker.

We haven’t been children for a very long time, but if I remember hard enough, the sensation remains. The taste still melts on my tongue.”

What We Want

Pseudopod is a genre magazine in audio form. We’re looking for horror: dark, weird fiction. We run the spectrum from grim realism or crime drama, to magic-realism, to blatantly supernatural dark fantasy. We publish highly literary stories reminiscent of Poe or Lovecraft as well as vulgar shock-value pulp fiction. We don’t split hairs about genre definitions, and we do not observe any taboos about what kind of content can appear in our stories. Originality demands that you’re better off avoiding vampires, zombies, and other recognizable horror tropes unless you have put a very unique spin on them. What matters most is that the stories are dark and compelling.

Since we’re an audio magazine, our audience can’t skim past the boring parts, so stories with beautiful language at the expense of plot don’t translate well. We’re looking for fiction with strong pacing, well-defined characters, engaging dialogue, and clear action. It can be beautiful too, if you’ve got all those other bases covered.

Dark humor is just fine, and we run it on occasion; but we are more interested in tragedy than comedy, and comedy is better received the more sick and morbid it is. Above all, we want stories that make us think, that stick with us, that make us catch ourselves checking the locks a second time before bed.

More tips here.

Holiday-themed stories (regardless of which holiday) are ideally submitted 4-5 months prior to the holiday in question. The same guideline applies if you have a book coming out soon and want to publish a short story with us to coincide with its release, and we’re always happy to delay publishing if the resulting timing is better for author promotion. (Although for a sure bet, you can always just grease our palms with a sponsorship two months beforehand — contact amanda@escapeartists.net.)

Length

We’re primarily interested in two lengths of fiction, which we’ve somewhat arbitrarily dubbed “short fiction” and “flash fiction”.

Short Fiction: This is the heart of our weekly podcast. We want short stories between about 2,000 and 6,000 words; we are quite hesitant to produce stories any longer than that, so anything longer than that will not be considered at all. (You are almost certainly better off cutting it down to 6,000 or less, even if it has been published previously at a greater length. The longer a story is, the more brilliant it needs to be to sustain audience interest in audio, and Pseudopod stories in particular tend to be no longer than 5,000 words as a rule.) We currently pay $100 for short fiction at this length.

Flash Fiction: We sometimes podcast short five-to-ten minute “bonus” pieces between our weekly main episodes. For this we’re looking at fiction under 1,500 words, with a sweet spot between 500 and 1000 words. Yes, that’s really really short. That’s the point. Our flash pieces are frequently quirkier and more experimental than our weekly features. We pay $20 for flash fiction.

If you have a story between 1,500 and 2,000 words, we’ll make a judgment call, based on whether we think the story would work better as a featured story or a bonus. But most of the time we’ll buy it as flash fiction.

“Reprints”

We do not discriminate between previously published and unpublished works. We’re an audio market, and we buy nonexclusive rights, so it doesn’t hurt us if a story has previously appeared in another market. In fact, we encourage new authors to send their work to other markets first, and then send it to us for audio rights after the story has appeared. You’re welcome to give us first dibs on anything you like, but consider: if your story’s good enough for us to buy it, it’s probably good enough to sell to another market first. Why not try that, and get two audiences and two checks?

If the text of the work is currently available online for free, that’s great! Let us know in your cover letter so we can link to it in the web post if we publish your story.

Multiple and Simultaneous Submissions

We do not accept multiple submissions. Please, one story at a time! Unless you’re specifically told otherwise, this is the rule at every fiction market.

We do consider simultaneous submissions (a story sent to us as well as one or more other markets at the same time), but we appreciate being advised that the story is under consideration elsewhere. In the event it is accepted by us as well as the other market(s), you’ll just need to let the editor know in response to your acceptance letter what other market(s) are slated to publish it and when. That gives us the chance to mention the fact in the intro to the story. We will also try to delay publication so as not to “scoop” the other market(s) before the publication date over there, but it will be up to you to communicate with the other market(s) to find out whether they insist on this or not. Unless you tell us so, we will consider delaying publication to be optional on our part. (In our experience, since we use audio format most other markets don’t seem to care one way or the other, and even appreciate it if we go live with it around the same time or sooner because it acts as publicity for them. But you never know, and should always check. For our part, though, we have no strong preference either way.)

The only exception to this is simultaneous submission of a single story to multiple Escape Artists podcasts (Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Pseudopod), which we ask that you avoid. When submitting to one Escape Artists podcast, please wait to hear back about it before submitting the same story to another.

How We Want It

Example:

From: Edgar Allen Poe
Date: Dec 13, 1889
Subject: Submission: The Pit and the Pendulum
To: submit@pseudopod.org

Dear Pseudopod:

I would like to submit my horror story "The Pit and the Pendulum" for
your podcast.  My work has appeared in numerous online and print venues
including _The Norton Anthology of Literature_, the Project Gutenberg
Web site (http://www.gutenberg.org), and _The Simpsons Halloween
Special_.   This particular work is in the public domain since it was first
published over a century ago, and all rights are available.  It has 
previously been adapted into a shockingly strange movie by Roger 
Corman.  Thank you for your time and consideration.


Edgar Poe
poeman@gmail.com


6200 Words
The Pit and the Pendulum
By Edgar Allen Poe

I was sick -- sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at
length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses
were leaving me. The sentence -- the dread sentence of death -- was the
last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the
sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy
indeterminate hum.  It conveyed to my soul the idea of _revolution_ --
perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel.
This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more.  [. . .]

We accept stories in plain text pasted into the body of an email, sent to the address submit@pseudopod.org. We don’t want Word files, PDF files, scanned images of a book, or sound files of you reading the story. Messages with any such attachments will probably get bounced. We will accept messages that are HTML formatted, but if you know how to turn it off, we greatly prefer plain text. Send it from the email address to which you want us to send correspondence to you!

Please be sure to include the word “submission” AND the title of the story in the Subject: line of the message. Most of our workflow involves bouncing your email message from one folder to another, and we use the email subject to identify the story. A subject like “story submission” doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.

In the body of the message, we want:

1. Your name. (Your real name. The story can have a different byline, and we’ll credit that byline in public, but we need to know who’s legally offering us this story and to whom the check should be written.)
2. A cover statement briefly giving us your publication credits (your top five or six publications at most), and in particular telling us whether this story has been published before or adapted into audio. If there’s anything we need to know about available rights, tell us that too. If the full text of the story is available online, that’s great — let us know what the URL is so we can link to it.
3. The word count of the story, rounded to the nearest hundred words. Don’t go nuts over which word count method to use, or whether to round up or down. We pay flat rate; we really don’t care. We just want a ballpark.
4. The title of the story.
5. The story’s byline.
6. The text of the story. Use single spacing, with blank lines between paragraphs and _underscores_ or *asterisks* (or whatever) for emphasis.

Once again, that address is submit@pseudopod.org. Any stories sent to any other address will be trashed, most likely without a response.

(The rest of these guidelines are basically just legalese.)

By sending us your story you understand and agree that:

• You are the original creator of the work submitted to us;
• You are the copyright holder of the work;
• You are not prohibited by any prior agreement from the transfer of non-exclusive electronic and audio rights to the work;
• All information in the contact and cover sections of your email is accurate and truthful;
• You accept sole responsibility for any false statements or encumbrances upon rights not disclosed to us.

If we buy your story we’ll send you a contract, and you’ll be bound to all of the above.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering whether you have audio rights to your stories: unless you’re doing work-for-hire for a game company, all reputable speculative fiction magazines of which we’re aware acquire serial print rights, often with non-exclusive electronic or anthology options. Some online markets may insist on electronic exclusivity for a certain period of time, and if so, you can’t publish it with us until after that period ends. However, we know of no regular short fiction market that contracts for exclusive audio rights. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen; always check your contracts.

What We Do With It

Once you’ve sent us your story, we will review it and respond to you via email in about two months. If it takes longer than that, please query.

If we decide we’d like it for our podcast, we’ll send you a contract as a PDF file in email. You will sign it and send it back to us either via email (after scanning it), fax, or postal mail. Then we’ll pay you via check or PayPal, whichever you indicated on the last page of the contract, and we’ll start producing.

During the production process we may contact you with questions about the story, its background, or pronunciations. We hope and expect that you’ll be available to help us, as a good performance makes all of us look good. Unfortunately, as everything we do is on a somewhat fluid schedule, we usually can’t give you an accurate timetable of when your story will appear in the podcast.

What the World Does With It

The audio files Pseudopod produces are released under a Creative Commons license. Specifically, we use the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 license. Briefly, this means that the entire world has permission to distribute the podcast for free, provided they give credit for it, don’t try to make money off of it, and don’t change it in any way. Transcribing it, extracting portions from it beyond fair use, and mashing it up are all prohibited. This license applies only to our audio performance of your work, for which we’ve contracted and paid you. It does not apply to your story itself; you retain your copyright and all rights to any other use of the story.

We’ve had some questions about this from the writing community, so we’d like to make our reasoning clear. We know that Creative Commons licensing is scary to many writers, and it’s certainly a radical break from traditional rights that expire after a period of time. Our take is this: when we create a podcast, we are putting an MP3 file on the Web. That MP3 file is going to get downloaded and copied onto thousands of hard drives, CDs, iPods, and other portable devices across the world. That’s the point. We want people to listen to it. But once you’ve done that, you can’t take that file back. There is no way to delete the file everywhere it exists. There are some highly fallible ways to lock things down, but DRM sucks, and even if we believed in it it’s too complicated for us to implement.

So from a purely practical perspective, we can’t make our content expire. And we can’t stop people from copying our files, nor should we. Given that reality, why not give our listeners the full legal right to do what’s totally natural for an audio file (copy it, share it with people, and listen to it whenever they want), but make equally clear to them what they can’t do (share the story outside the podcast, or alter it in any way at all)? That’s our reason for the Creative Commons license. We’re not trying to plant a philosophical flag in the ground here; we’re just trying to reflect reality.

We hope you’ll agree with our reasons and choose to share your story with us. If you don’t, then we’re deeply sorry, but we feel it’s better that you know this now, before you make the decision to submit.

Any questions?

If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or criticism (but not stories) send them to our staff at editor@pseudopod.org. We’ll do our best to get back to you within a few days.

Thanks very much for your time, and we look forward to reading — and hopefully speaking — what you’ve got!

This story originally appeared, simultaneously in French and English, at Onirismes.com in Spring 2011 (still available at the link). Sybaris was a real city, a wealthy Greek colony founded in Italy in the 8th century BC, destroyed by flood in the sixth century when its enemies diverted a river through the city’s streets in retribution for its citizens’ greed. From whence the word “sybaritic”, a very fine synonym for “self-indulgent”, has descended into modern English.

Michael J. DeLuca attended the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2005, helps run the indie ebook site Weightless Books, has volunteered at Small Beer Press for longer than he cares to admit, and is a member of the Homeless Moon writers’ cabal. His short stories have appeared in Interfictions, Apex, Clockwork Phoenix and The Future Fire. If you like this story, you might try his series of centaur westerns, which are similarly Classics-infused and brutal, and can be found in the archives (some in audio form) at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. His website, The Mossy Skull, can be found at the link under his name at the top. Also check out Literary Beer at the Small Beer website and his profile at Writertopia for a list of previous work.

Your reader this week is Tina Connolly whose debut dark fantasy IRONSKIN is forthcoming this October from Tor. Not horror, but definitely dark. Also, be sure to check out Tina’s own weekly short fiction podcast at TOASTED CAKE.

“”Do you wonder, my brothers in service of death, what powers the prophet takes with her on her voyage down the Acheron? We all do, I suspect: all of us from Sybaris who felt the lash of her tongue. She told many bleak fates. We all wonder which she is waiting yet to fulfill–or else I suspect so many wouldn’t have come to bestow such gifts!” He cackled.

“Sheshet, astronomer priestess of Egypt, achieved deathly might through preservation. She took her own life by drowning, at the age of twenty-nine. Her cult preserved her flesh and organs whole in vats of lotus honey. It is said she left plans for her own resurrection, and any man who walks within miles of her tomb dies of fever before the next moonrise.”"

This story now appears in the collection TORN REALITIES, available from Amazon.com.

Read by Ben Phillips

But less than a year later, when Lord Galen returned home from a hunting trip, he discovered four of his guards torn limb-from-limb, his bedroom window broken in from the outside, monstrous claw marks on the second floor balcony and, of his beloved, no trace. Most disturbing of all was what he beheld graven into the wall above her bed: a monstrous blue sigil in the form of a six-lobed eye. No earthly implement could have rendered the perfectly aligned delineations of that unmentionable shape; nor could any earthly ink have provided its hateful color which glimmered balefully even in total darkness.

Terrible was Lord Galen’s grief, but even more terrible was the thing which grew by degrees within him: his wrath.

This story originally saw publication on the Daily Science Fiction website in 2011 and can still read there at this link.

Nicky Drayden is a Systems Analyst who dabbles in prose when she’s not buried in code. She resides in Austin, Texas where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required. To see more of her work, click the link under her name, above.

Your reader this week is Laurice White. Click her name to visit her website or check her out at Voice123.

Non-audio produced version of the story is available as the second option below.

” With a fine bone knife I make my incision, cutting back the sticky membrane of Our Tjeng’s hull. I slip my hand inside and carefully widen the tear until it’s big enough for me to step through. Our Tjeng has blessed Kae and me with gills to breathe within his walls. The viscous liquid is clear and burns my eyes, tart and slick on my tongue.

We’re civil. There’s too much at stake not to be. The flock cannot afford to lose another fathership, and Our Tjeng needs us caretakers to keep him functioning.’”

“Our Drunken Tjeng” used the following sounds from Freesound to make the Fathership soundscape.

“earthscan1″ by irad

“deep pulse_02.L-Joined” by martian

“Ambient Darkness” by DJ Chronos

“Single Heartbeat HQ_BeatSmith” by Lunardrive

“heartbeat regular” by zimm

This story was originally published in 1897 in THE SECRET ROSE. It is available to read online in a number of spots including here

Yeats (1865-1939) was winner of the Nobel Prize and Ireland’s greatest poet and dramatist. The son of a renowned Dublin artist, he was educated partly in Ireland and partly in London and during this time formed an interest in occultism. Later, drawing on his experiences with his relatives in Sligo, he began to write on folklore, the first results being published in 1893 as THE CELTIC TWILIGHT. This title was subsequently used to label a school of writing that attempted a renaissance of ancient Irish culture. Yeats’ style in prose - like in his poetry - is gloriously varied: from light, beautiful tales of unworldly fantasy to grim and horrifying parables of death and cruelty.

Read for us by the redoubtable Wilson Fowlie (begorra!)

“His eyes strayed from the Abbey tower of the White Friars and the town battlements to a row of crosses which stood out against the sky upon a hill a little to the eastward of the town, and he clenched his fist, and shook it at the crosses. He knew they were not empty, for the birds were fluttering about them; and he thought how, as like as not, just such another vagabond as himself was hanged on one of them; and he muttered: ‘If it were hanging or bowstringing, or stoning or beheading, it would be bad enough. But to have the birds pecking your eyes and the wolves eating your feet! I would that the red wind of the Druids had withered in his cradle the soldier of Dathi, who brought the tree of death out of barbarous lands, or that the lightning, when it smote Dathi at the foot of the mountain, had smitten him also, or that his grave had been dug by the green-haired and green-toothed merrows deep at the roots of the deep sea.’”

This story is previously unpublished. The story is also available to read online at The Repository forum of Thomas Ligotti Online.

The anthology Werewolves & Shapeshifters: Encounters With The Beast Within includes Nicole’s short fiction (alongside stories by Neil Gaiman and George R.R. Martin). Her work also appears in the Cemetery Dance Richard Laymon tribute anthology In Laymon’s Terms.

Your reader this week is Jonathan Sullivan, who regularly reads for ESCAPE POD.

“It’s another cool April morning in Hell, and the hanging trees (just saplings, really) are starting to sprout fleshy, strangled buds that look like choking fetuses caught up in tiny, umbilical nooses.

I am not, after all, a monster – even if I am in the employ of Hell. Even if (as my fellow laborers predict) some of the fruit will grow up to call me “Demon”, this is an absurd epithet. I do not want to be in this position. But my cares, my wants, my sense of being an individual with free will – these are things of the past. Shams more easily harbored during a lifetime marinated in the sweet sauce of ignorance.”

One of the masters of ghost story writing - he codified the subgenre of “the antiquarian ghost story”. Click the link under his name to read more. Almost all of his works are now in the public domain. This tale was written in 1927 to be read ’round the campfire to Scouts at their summer camp. It can be read online here

“Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo.… Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage. Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story.’”

Your reader this week is David Moore - click his name to visit his Livejournal page. David works for Solaris and Abaddon Books, reads stories for DARK FICTION audio magazine (check out some stories he’s narrated here, here & here) and has a story coming up in the April 4th released anthology PANDEMONIUM: STORIES IN THE SMOKE, in which Charles Dickens is given the genre treatment. He has earned the gentle ministrations of our tentacles and our unending gratitude for a late-game save!

“‘I don’t know as there’s anything much wrong with the water,’ said the shepherd. ‘All I know is, my old dog wouldn’t go through that field, let alone me or anyone else that’s got a morsel of brains in their heads.’

‘More fool them,’ said Stanley Judkins, at once rudely and ungrammatically. ‘Who ever took any harm going there?’ he added.

‘Three women and a man,’ said the shepherd gravely. ‘Now just you listen to me. I know these ’ere parts and you don’t, and I can tell you this much: for these ten years last past there ain’t been a sheep fed in that field, nor a crop raised off of it — and it’s good land, too. You can pretty well see from here what a state it’s got into with brambles and suckers and trash of all kinds. You’ve got a glass, young gentleman,’ he said to Wilfred Pipsqueak, ‘you can tell with that anyway.’

‘Yes,’ said Wilfred, ‘but I see there’s tracks in it. Someone must go through it sometimes.’

‘Tracks!’ said the shepherd. ‘I believe you I see four tracks: three women and a man.’

‘There’s some p’r’aps could tell you who they was,’ said the shepherd, ‘but it was afore my time they come by their end. And why they goes there still is more than the children of men can tell: except I’ve heard they was all bad ‘uns when they was alive.””

“The God Complex” was originally published in the Terminal Earth anthology by Poundlit Press.

Neil John Buchanan (click his name above for his website) lives in the south-west of England with three manic cats, two small children and a long-suffering, sympathetic wife. He is a horror fiction writer with work published in various online and print venues such as Pseudopod, Drabblecast, Necrotic Tissue and Morpheus Tales. He also writes for STARBURST magazine and he’s in the final editing stages of a steampunk/fantasy/horror mash-up novella entitled CLOCKWORK KNIGHTS.

Your reader this week is Rashida Smith - click her name to visit Eddygirl!

“She recognized an Echo drone when she saw one. Probably a scout sent to investigate the crash.

‘I am God,’ it pronounced. ‘Do you come in love?’”

This story was originally printed in Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine #28, 2007, and has since been reprinted in Year’s Best Australian SF & Fantasy #4 (MirrorDanse Books, 2008); The Writing Show “Ghast Fest”, October 2008, Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror #3 (Brimstone Press, 2009) and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine Best Of Horror Volume 2, 2010 (whew!). won the 2008 Ditmar Award for Best Short Story.

Rick, whose website can be reached by the link under his name, lives in Melbourne, Australia, where he works in the transport industry. His stories have appeared in Aurealis, Weird Tales, Dunesteef Audio Magazine and several anthologies.

Read for us by our own Graeme Dunlop!

“The light touched on a bulky, indefinite shape, hard by a tree, obscured by a low branch across the top of it.

‘Maybe it was a night bird like you said before,’ said Andrew, not at all sounding like he believed it. ‘I’ve sometimes heard a bird call that sounds like ‘Whatcha reading.’ Maybe there’s something out here that hoots ‘Hey you there’ at night.’”

DOG

By Stephen Hodgkinson.

Stephen lives & works in Manchester, United Kingdom. He is working on a collection of short stories that he hopes to publish by Summer 2012.

Read by Eve Upton, who previously starred as the mushroom in “Tippler’s Bane”.

“The girl stared out of her bedroom window. Her neighbour, the little boy was playing alone in his garden. She hated him, she hated his constant happiness, and she hated the confident way he dealt with his own company.

She hated him and she was very lonely.

“You could kill him” said a tiny voice lurking somewhere in the room.”

ANNOTATIONS

by Brady Golden.

Brady lives in Oakland, California with his wife and daughter. Click the link under his name to visit his website and find him on Twitter at @bradiation.

Text read by David Michel.

Numbers read by Melissa Bugaj. Click her name to hear her host original children’s stories at the Night Light Stories podcast.

“There are any number of books containing illustrations of the runes to be inscribed at the ritual’s onset. Some exist only in the private collections of reclusive eccentrics, while others are as close as your local library, misfiled at the ends of dimly lit aisles that smell like public toilets.”

“Annotations” uses this chime sound from Freesound.

“crystal_glass” by reinsamba

THE DROWNER

By Peadar O Guillin

Click his name to sample some FROZEN STORIES. Random House published his first novel, THE INFERIOR, in 2007 (2008 in North America). The translation rights have since been sold to ten different markets. A sequel called THE DESERTER will be appearing in the U.S. and Canada in March 2012. He is also the author of numerous short stories, the most recent of which is “Heartless” over at BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES (December 2011), “Fairy Gold”, due out in LORE in March 2012 or “The Dowry” in the next issue (#16) of BLACK GATE.

Read by Cian MacMahon. Click the link under his name to visit his blog.

“As they sank together, Sean continued to stare into the strange white face of the Drowner. It hadn’t decayed too badly. The hair must have kept growing after he’d been lost. Bits of twig lay tangled there and tiny fry swam in and out of it as the walls of the island’s roots kept rising away from them. The eyes were whole too and Sean fancied he saw a flicker of recognition in them as well as a slight, shy smile on the rotted lips.”

“The Drowner” uses these water and seascape sounds from Freesound.

“bajo_agua_LOOP” by plagasul

“Water1″ by pushtobreak

“Water2″ by pushtobreak

“Water4″ by pushtobreak

“Water” by Halion

“ELEMENTS_WATER_01_Underwater” by suonho

“Water” by Batuhan

“Herring & Great Black backed Gulls 2 edited” by genghis attenborough

“bubblesrealslow (2)” by Rhedcerulean

“SplashEdit” by duckboy80

“Lapping Waves and Sea Gulls 2″ by digifishmusic

“Scuba 1″ by digifishmusic

“Underwater (small river)” by melarancida

“Pirate Ship at Bay” by CGEffex

“01650 underwater bubbles” by Robinhood76

“Credo” by cormi

“03_Lanes_Island_Water_2_LowBoat_48_24″ by tomtenney

(a regular “Night Gallery”, if you will…)

HUNTING

By Kirsty Logan

who is also co-editor of Fractured West. Narrated by Rick Stringer of VARIANT FREQUENCIES.

“There was only one inner door, so the hunter opened it. He held his candle at arm’s length, but still could see nothing more than the foot of an ocean-sized bed. The hunter crawled across its length, disregarding the brief waft of mold from the blankets. He placed the candlestick on the squat table beside the bed and pulled the covers up over his body.”

WHAT MAKES YOU TICK?

By David Steffen

who founded and co-edits DIABOLICAL PLOTS. The text version of this story can be found at Brain Harvest. Narrated by W. Ralph Walters of FREQUENCY OF FEAR.

“…they bring their straps and their knives and explore the frontiers of my body. They will find nothing.”

PAGEANT GIRLS

By Caroline Yoachim

This story appeared originally in Issue #42 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Narrated by Mur Lafferty who can also be found at The Murverse.

“‘Didn’t take long to find where it was coming from, and it was a bad thing. I wasn’t the only dead girl in the pageant. The new girl, the new dead girl, she was competition.”

(sorry, Valentine’s Day has already passed!)

IN MEMORIAM

By Matthew Chrulew

Click his name for some “Negentropy”. This story was originally published in Shadowed Realms 8 in 2005, and is available to read at the link, and the podcast of another story can be found at Terra Incognita Speculative Fiction 16 from 2010. His novella from Twelfth Planet Press, “The Angælien Apocalypse” is a finalist in the Aurealis Awards’ science fiction short story category. Click the title to purchase a copy.

Narrated by Philippa Ballantine.

“She approaches the spot and pulls into the gravelly emergency lane. It is still there, like always, in the traditional place to the side of the road - her husband’s memorial cross, attesting his memory in some little way to the passing drivers. Still bearing the wreath of carnations she left last week.

And she remembers his death, as it must have happened - that shrieking scratch of metal, that infinite slide, that smash into the tree.”

PIECES

By M.C. Funk

Under his name came be found what he’s responsible for…

Narrated by Donna Lynch.

“I knew your demon would be hungry the moment I found it. How it crouched toad-like behind the cleaning products under our sink. From its eight-ball eyes to the mouth that spread atop its stomach, your demon’s shape was fat with appetite.

I came to you terrified and smelling of bleach. “Oh yeah.” You had sad-dog eyes. “I was meaning to tell you about that.”"

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

By Bint Arab

Click his name and satisfy your “Bibliophilia”.

Narrated by our forum’s own Marshal Latham!

“‘”I made you young, Mother, so you won’t have to worry about your heart problems any more.” He swiped some of the dirt off her face and wrapped her in the towel so he wouldn’t have to touch her as he guided her to the house.”

KING

By C. Deskin Rink.

Mr. Rink has previously appeared on Pseudopod with episode #186 - “Ankor Sabat”. A sequel to it, “The High Priest”, appeared as episode #35 of the (Cast Macabre podcast). He has an upcoming story, “Kingdom of Sorrow,” in the Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations anthology.

Read by V.O. Bloodfrost, who previously read the Podcastle Miniature #65 “Blood Willows”. He can be contacted at his Twitter @VBloodfrost.

“The first time I beheld my King was amidst the arcades and columns of Babylon beneath an aching, cerulean firmament. From the uppermost heights of the hanging gardens he descended, taking each megalithic tier in a single stride until his final step cracked wide the world itself. His bloodshot eyes stared out at me from beneath his golden crown: wide and perfectly round – bereft of lids, lashes or flesh. “Hail!” I cried out, “Hail! Our King is descended from on high to rule the Earth!”"

NUMBER 21 RUE LE SUEUR

By Edward McDermott

While the story is fiction, the events it describes are all real: Dresden, 84 avenue foch, 93 Rue Lauriston, and Number 21 Rue le Sueur .

Read by Ben Phillips.

“”We had received several reports about a doctor in Paris who was part of the resistance. Dr. Eugene of the resistance cell code named Fly-Tox. He was one of many, and we were told to concentrate on the Red Orchestra, that was the Communist spy system and resistance system in France. Your British and American agents were simply not that important.

“The problem was that Fourrier knew nothing, and Petiot wouldn’t talk. There was no proof of any escape line. We tracked several people who supposedly used this line to disappear, and disappear they did, but they never turned up anywhere else.”

WAR

By Aaron Ashley Garrison

Click his name for his website. Aaron also blogs at Synchroshock.

Read by Dominic Rabrun. Click the link under his name to visit his blog, Sketch Banquet.

“‘These little rabbit’s feet, on my neck? They mean I’ve killed a man. Men. And I don’t regret nothin. It was war.”

Mark Valentine has written a biography of the Welsh author and mystic Arthur Machen (Seren, 1990) and TIME, A FALCONER (Tartarus Press, 2011), a study of the diplomat and fantasist ‘Sarban’. His stories of an aesthetical occult detective were recently brought together in THE COLLECTED CONNOISSEUR (Tartarus Press, 2010). He edits Wormwood, a journal of the literature of the fantastic, supernatural and decadent. Mark’s latest project is a book of short stories, SECRET EUROPE (Ex Occidente Press), due in early 2012, jointly with fellow author John Howard.

Read for us by the unflappable Ian Stuart!

“‘Cormorant, from the Latin for “sea-raven”. The Tudors saw the bird as a symbol for gluttony: Shakespeare refers to hungry Time as a cormorant. It may have gained this reputation because of its proficiency at catching fish. Milton, however, invested the bird with a dark glamour: he likened Lucifer sitting in the Tree of Life to a cormorant, no doubt because of the bird’s habit of standing with its black wings spread out to dry. The satanic image stuck. The occultist and poet Ludovic Horne wrote of his “Cormorant days/dark and sleek”. The atheist essayist Llewellyn Powys refers to the birds as “satanic saints” in Parian niches on the chalk cliffs of Dorset, but he celebrated them too as manifesting the ecstasy of the moment, as they plunge into the sea after the silver-scaled fish of their dreams. Conan Doyle alludes to an untold Sherlock Holmes case of “The Lighthouse Keeper and the Trained Cormorant”. Isherwood cites them in a nonsense poem. Folklore about them is much barer than the literary record.”

This podcast uses these wave and bird sounds from from Freesound and cormorant recordings lifted from Youtube.

“Seaford1″ by acclivity

“UrbanHerringGulls” by acclivity

“beach_waves” by 3bagbrew

“GullsByTheSea” by acclivity

“oceanwavescrushing” by Luftrum

“Fiji Beach (Stereo)128kbps” by c97059890

“Seagulls close-up” by juskiddink

“WavesOnBeach” by acclivity

Click his name to visit his website. This story was first published as a part of Mike Stackpole’s Chain Story project in August 2010. Steven’s work appears in print in the anthologies Mages & Magic, Timeshares and Hungry For Your Love, and in several magazines both online and off, including On Spec, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, SFWA Bulletin, and On Spec. He has a story in the anthology Westward Weird due out from DAW Books in Spring 2012, and the third book of The Crimson Pact is due out at the end of March 2012. He also provides publishing services and publishes books as Alliteration Ink. The Drabblecast recently did an audio version of his story “Broken”.

Read by Stephanie Morris. Click the link to get infected with SCRIBBLEOMANIA!

“‘Mrs. Freeman,’ Dr. Montegro said, ‘I believe there was a tale in the offering. While your observations of old age are … fascinating… they are not the coin of the realm. So to speak.’ The doctor looked down through his glasses at her. ‘We trade stories here, madam, and your grandson was going to tell one.’

Sarah looked up at the paneled ceiling for a moment, then back at the listening men. ‘What you don’t know is that Sherman didn’t do it all himself.’”

Click his name to visit his website, DESCENT INTO LIGHT. Mike is also editor of the critically acclaimed CLOCKWORK PHOENIX anthology series and the long-running poetry journal MYTHIC DELERIUM. This story first appeared in Penny Dreadful, and was reprinted in the anthology THE BIBLE OF HELL and Mike’s poetry collection STRANGE WISDOMS OF THE DEAD. He is planning a collection of his horror stories, including this tale and previous Pseudopod submissions “The Button Bin” and “The Blessed Days” to be published by Apex Books.

Read by Christiana Ellis, who recently read “Plus Or Minus” for ESCAPE POD.

“A day will come when the sun’s pale yellow stare starts to fill with the taint of blood.

Among the confused and tremulous hordes of mankind, amidst the endless processions of grand towers forged from metal stolen from the moon, I will walk. One knowing face, one unique being traversing the rivers of humanity that flood this world.”

Sean has two novels coming out in 2012 - THE SURVIVORS is coming this fall from Lethe Press, and a suspense novel, TRIGGER POINT, coming in March from a new publisher called Musa Publishing. He also has a story upcoming in Bruce Bethke’s STUPEFYING STORIES from Rampant Loon Press

Read by Mark E. Phair, who last read “The Line” for Pseudopod.

“I recovered myself with difficulty. I was in my mentor’s house. I stood here uninvited but nevertheless I stood here. Understanding the opportunity, my attention burst outward in glances both rapid and greedy. I took in everything, finding the details of corners, seeking every scrap of intimate but banal information about the man. People might think this insane—I had after all worked closely with my mentor for a decade and a half, giving him my poems for his unsparing critiques, listening and agreeing to his thoughts on literature, attending his seminars and readings, making his friends my friends. I still was not good enough. I had never published anything but I kept at it. I was poor and I wrote about poverty. “You are poor,” my mentor would say, “but you have not suffered.” I was lonely and I wrote about loneliness. “Yes, you are lonely,” my mentor confirmed, “but loneliness is not suffering.” Gradually this became the sum of his critique. At the bottom of each returned poem he scribbled: “You still have not suffered.” I felt I would never understand. I looked about this room now as if it would tell me how to feel the anguish that clearly my mentor felt, the despair that made him so superior a poet. How could his kitchen tell me more about him than his verse, which was so confessional, so full of agony and torment, like a man imprisoned in his own flesh? What was knowledge of his plates and silverware in comparison? What could his dirty dishes tell me about his soul?”

Click his name for his home page. The story can be read here at the BBCi Cult website. It originally appeared in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST NEW HORROR 16 (2005), BY BLOOD WE LIVE (2009) and the author’s collection THIS IS NOW (2007).

Read by Steve Anderson.

“‘If you were seeing the fence for the first time, you’d likely wonder at the straightness of it, the way in which the concrete posts had been planted at ten yard intervals deep into the rock. You might ask yourself if national forests normally went to these lengths, and you’d soon remember they didn’t, that for the most part a cheerful little wooden sign by the side of the road was all that was judged to be required. If you kept on walking deeper, intrigued, sooner or later you’d see a notice attached to one of the posts. The notices are small, designed to convey authority rather than draw attention.

I remember when the fences went up. Thirty years ago. 1985. Our parents knew what they were for. Hell, we were only eight and we knew.”

This podcast uses these wind and pool sounds from from Freesound.

“Wind” by Batuhan

“Wind2″ by Sagetyrtle

“Pool shot” by Cameronmusic

“Ae.Billiard Ball Rolling” by Bunyi

“Pool balls” by Bsumusictech

“Pool Break” by AaHanson

Read by Paul S. Jenkins, author of The Plitone Revisionist

We were in our places, Olivia at the door and I in the wicker basket. The windows were concealed with heavy curtains to keep out the afternoon sun, but oil lamps pushed back the gloom.

The basket that hid me was a cubit square. Within it, I sat naked on a thin cotton mat, waiting for my cue.

For the preceding installment in this story, please check out “The Garden And The Mirror”

For the next installment, proceed to “Nourished By Chaff, We Believe The Glamor”, part of the Trio of Terror.

Read by Cayenne Chris Conroy of the Teknikal Diffikulties podcast

Her teachers never asked her to remove the headphones. What was the point? The girl earned a 100% on every quiz and exam, and when they called on her, Lynnette spat the answer back like a rifle ejecting a shell.

And Lynette was tall. She towered past six feet by the time she reached eighth grade. And her long black hair that she rarely brushed only made her seem taller when it fell down over her wide shoulders; she was heavy-set, truly big-boned, more muscle than fat. And she put that muscle to use during the “Lynette Incidents,” as they came to be called.

For further Coyote Tales, please check out:

Reservation Monsters
“Love Like Thunder”
and “The Shooting Way” in “The Trio Of Terror”

Read by Cayenne Chris Conroy of Teknikal Diffikulties

After he pitched his nylon tent in a nearby juniper grove at the base of the hill, he slept until moonrise. Then, under the pale light, he unfolded his steel trench-shovel and walked uphill toward the cemetery, looking for love.

Dondo squatted over his haunches beside the grave, holding his hands over the sandy earth like he was warming himself beside a campfire. He pinched sand from the base of the tombstone, tasted it, then spat to the north. Here was love. He dug.

For further Coyote Tales, please check out:

Reservation Monsters

“The Dreaming Way”

and “The Shooting Way” in “The Trio Of Terror”

Read by Alasdair Stuart

She asked me, “Will you teach the secrets of the soul and flesh?”

“I remember the case. I taught the boy to banish it.”

For the follow-up to this story, please check out “The Mother And The Worm”

and then proceed to “Nourished By Chaff, We Believe The Glamor”, part of the Trio of Terror.

Read by Alasdair Stuart

It had been some time since we had last been called to a meeting of the White Street Society and all of us yearned to quench the thirst for the strange that these meetings had fostered in our souls, which is why the three of us – Drake, Lewis and myself – finally abandoned formality and stopped by the clubhouse uninvited, fully expecting Augustus to be absent, overseas perhaps, investigating some mysterious mystery. Instead, we stood frozen in surprise and dripping with February rain in the doorway of the clubroom, watching our old friend sitting by the fire and reading the papers, as cool as an oyster.

“And where’s Charles?,” said Lewis, as an unfamiliar manservant helped him off with his overcoat.
For further adventures of THE WHITE STREET SOCIETY, please check out:

“Tales Of The White Street Society”.

and “The Yellow Curse” in THE TRIO OF TERROR.

This week’s episode sponsored by Audible.com, who offers you a free audiobook download of your choice from their selection of over 40,000 titles.

Read by Alasdair Stuart

A creak of the flooring caught my attention and I turned sharply, expecting to find my guide creeping up behind me with a jackblack in her hand and murder in her Irish eyes. Instead, I beheld a waif with a waxen pallor, protruding bones and papery skin, crouching just inside the doorway. Her furtive creeping was arrested when she saw me. Rising up to her full height she fixed her watery eyes on me and said:

Just as I was about to strike her for her insolence, her face slackened and she swooned. I stepped forward to catch her, then noticed spittle running from her mouth, and stepped back so as to avoid soiling my clothes.

For further adventures of THE WHITE STREET SOCIETY, please check out:

“The Corpse Army of Khartoum”

and “The Yellow Curse” in THE TRIO OF TERROR.

Read by Ben Phillips

“When I was your age, I ran away from school all the time. The tribal police would gather all us kids up from the hogans and the cabins, haul us to the boarding schools, cut our hair, tell us not to talk Navajo, feed us flour with bugs in it. All that crap you hear about now in documentaries. I ran away to my auntie’s house near Canyon de Chelly. She was a seer and a hand trembler. The Navajos around there, if they couldn’t sleep or they were sick, they sent a runner to my auntie and she came with her rock crystal and her corn pollen and went over their home until her hand trembled like she was holding on to an electric fence. And she saw things. Visions no one else could see. The sort of visions you’re seeing now. The things that cause sickness. Death. Things that have to be dealt with. Things that have to be sung and prayed over, so the person can be healthy again.”

For further Coyote Tales, please check out:

“Love Like Thunder”
“The Dreaming Way”
and “The Shooting Way” in “The Trio Of Terror”

Click her name for her home page, or visit her blog on the same site. This story originally appeared in issue #23 of Apex Magazine. Eugie’s newest story collection, RETURNING MY SISTER’S FACE AND OTHER FAR EASTERN TALES OF WHIMSY AND MALICE is published by Norilana Books and is available for Kindle, Nook and ePpub, iPad, PDF, Palm (PDB) and Sony (LRF).

Read by Kara Grace, who also read “Braiding The Ghosts” for PODCASTLE.

“‘When the train arrived, it was jammed with commuters: students, salarymen, and office ladies. I squeezed into the last car, and more bodies pushed in behind me. My stomach churned, assaulted by cloying perfume, stale cigarette smoke, and sour sweat.

I was so intent upon not being sick that at first I didn’t notice that somewhere between Shibuya and Harajuko stations, a man’s hand had settled on my leg. Surrounded by blank-faced commuters, wedged so tightly I couldn’t move, I had no idea who it belonged to. As the train jostled along, the hand slipped higher, burning a sweat-slick trail from knee to thigh. At the next juddering stop, my agitated insides heaved, and I shoved free from the car. I fled into the closest ladies? toilet to throw up. Stomach as empty and deflated as my spirits, I splashed water on my face, trying not to cry.

The door opened, and a girl in a school uniform identical to mine stepped to the sink beside me. She pulled a glittering gold bag embossed with distinctive Louis Vuitton monograms out of her schoolbag. After dumping an array of makeup on the counter, she proceeded to sketch in her eyebrows with a dark pencil.

‘I saw what happened, you know.” Her voice was low and rich. “You’re supposed to yell ‘chikan’ when they grope you. Everyone says train perverts make them want to puke, but you’re the first I’ve seen who really has. You must be new to Tokyo.’”

This story is available to read here.

Orrin’s first collection is due out from Evileye Books sometime early next year. It’ll be called Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings and will feature ten of his stories, including the out of print, 22,000 word novella “The Mysterious Flame.” Also, Orrin is currently editing an anthology of horror stories that involve fungus. Get sporing…

Read by Rich Girardi.

“There was a sound come up from the hole, like a gasp. The men figured we’d hit a pocket of gas and everyone backed off in case it was like to burn. Then the derrick shook all the way up and the ground seemed to slide a little under our feet. There come a noise from the hole like I ain’t never heard the ground make in all my years. When I was a boy, my pa’d known a man who worked a whaling ship and he said that whales sang to one another. He’d put his hands together over his mouth and blown a call that he said was as close as he could do to what they sounded like. This sounded like that call.

All the men went back another pace, not knowing if maybe we’d hit a sinkhole, or God knows what. There was another groan, then an old cave stink, and then the black stuff started coming up around the pipe like a tide. I’d seen gushers in my day, the pressurized wells that blew the tops off the derricks, but this weren’t the same. This weren’t no geyser; this were a flood, the oil pouring up from under the ground like a barrel that’s been overturned. Everybody was silent for another minute and then the men gathered ’round all cheered, ’cause they knowed we’d finally hit whatever it was we’d been aiming at.”