When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird (continue to) Turn Pro


For 2016, PseudoPod has new pay rates. For all new submissions, we will pay the pro rate of $.06 per word for original fiction. We will pay $100 flat rate for short fiction reprints (2,000 words or more), and $20 flat rate for flash fiction reprints (stories below 2,000 words). This makes all the original fiction purchases pro-paying. See the submission guidelines for further details. To maintain a transparent relationship without the writing community, We have also placed our contract templates on the submission guidelines page.

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PseudoPod 474: Mr. Hill’s Death


Mr. Hill’s Death

by S.L. Gilbow


Mr. Hill’s death is posted on YouTube. You can’t actually see him. Just the back of his sunflower yellow convertible, top up, cruising along a two lane road. The fifty-second clip, taken from a dash cam in a following car, seems rather ordinary at first, and you might think you were watching a typical drive through a wooded countryside. That is if the clip weren’t titled “Tragic Car Wreck.”

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PseudoPod 473: Sack Race To The River


Sack Race To The River

by Chris Kuriata


After cramming ourselves into the sack—my brother and I crouched on top of Dad’s shoulder blades like a pair of folded wings—Dad galloped down the stairs and out into the night. My brother and I cheered, enjoying the midnight wind blasting across our faces. Dad ran to the escarpment, grabbing the trunks of skinny trees to keep his balance as we skidded down the incline. He ran to the edge of the river, huffing and puffing, checking the time on his phone.

“Seven minutes,” he said. “Thank God we’ve started now ’cause we need practice. We need so much practice.”

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PseudoPod 472: Self Portrait With Embellishments


Self Portrait With Embellishments

by Ryan Dull


These are the things you need to make art: Discipline, Opportunity, Inspiration.

Discipline begets Craft, Output, and Dispassionate Self-Criticism. I’ve had Discipline since I was eight years old.

Opportunity means that you can afford the time and the food and the ink required to make art. I’ve had Opportunity since I was a pair of star-crossed gametes.

I have never had Inspiration.

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PseudoPod 471: Flash On The Borderlands XXX: Flash Fiction Contest IV

Show Notes

These are the winners of the fourth round of the Pseudopod Flash Fiction Contest. All are Pseudopod Originals.

The next phase of the Flash Fiction Contest will be run by Escape Pod. Get your science fiction flash prepared.


Cold Spots

by Lena Coakley

narrated by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

Lena says about this story, “To me, ‘Cold Spots’ is a very New England story. All the imagery is pinched from childhood memories of my grandmother’s summerhouse on the Connecticut shore. I see it as being about the disappointment that comes when we realize adulthood is not what we thought it would be when we were children, and the desire to get back to a self that may never have existed. This will be my first podcasted story so I’m beyond excited to hear it.”


Salt on my lips. Sun on the sea. My body slides through the water easily as if it had never aged. I have to swim farther and farther out to find you, but you are always there. In the cold spots.

On land the past is vague and distant, but something about the sudden gooseflesh, the delicious shock between my legs, brings you back, and I remember.


Down

by Nathaniel Lee

narrated by Graeme Dunlop


It started with the basement. The steps descended into darkness. The light was on, I could see the light, the light was glowing its little heart out, but about three steps from the bottom, it just stopped. The shadows thickened and there was a hint of concrete floor, then nothing. I didn’t want to go down there, even though I’d just heard the dryer buzz.

Linny went to investigate. She made it five steps down. Then she was gone, too. And the darkness was closer.


The Mindfulness of Horror Practice

written and narrated by Jon Padgett

Jon says about this story, “After my family and I returned home to a devastated New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, a friend of mine suggested I start meditating to help deal with acute depression and anxiety. I did so after finding a mindfulness of breathing practice which I favored, and it was transformative. Some time back, it struck me that the flip side of such a practice might be interesting to explore, and—thus— ‘The Mindfulness of Horror’ was born.”


In this recording I’m going to be leading you through all four stages of the mindfulness of horror practice. Closing your eyes. Become aware of the air on your skin, the temperature in the room. Any noises or smells. Accept them all, good or bad and let go. Not clinging to anything or pushing anything away, but embracing every sensation.

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PseudoPod 470: The Santa Claus Parade


The Santa Claus Parade

by Helen Marshall


Some people think the Santas are smiling.

The Company tries to weed out that kind of thinking pretty early on with videos from the eighties, people with big hair, shoulder pads, smiling in bleached out, crackling colours. There are diagrams about brain function. A specialist gave a talk on the subject but I slept all the way through it. Sweet dreams.

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PseudoPod 469: Hunger

Show Notes

“I’m Canadian and winters can be long and rough up here, and that was sort of the inspiration for this story. It wasn’t uncommon for people in rural areas not all that long ago to get horribly lost during a whiteout (a heavy and unrelenting snowstorm). People would leave their home to get something in their barn, and they’d be found a few days later in a pile of snow because they couldn’t find their way back. I always thought it was a terrifying idea, and I really hope the listeners at home think so too!”


Hunger

by Caitlin Marceau


Jean pulls a pine needle from inside his coat pocket and slowly begins to gnaw on it. “It’s better than dying lost in a forest, or being eaten by starving wolves.”

“I’d welcome the wolves, Jean. At least then I’d have a chance to bite some meat off one of them, and die with a full stomach. Besides, the dogs had enough brains to get out of here a long while ago.”

“There’s still some. How else do you account for the howling outside our cabin all night?”

“The wind,” he shoots back dismissively.

“Or a wendigo,” Jean says quietly, in a voice a whisper. (Continue Reading…)