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Stories, Podcasts, Interviews, and Articles, 2022:
New Story
September 27, 2022, in Fantasy
Trans-Dimensional Monsters and Suburban Gods
by STEVE ODEN
∼∼ Where do the old gods go and what do they do, once the new gods of tech take over? ∼∼
Vanquishing monsters in the multiverse and the neighborhood, with the satisfying knowledge one was fitting right in to suburbia.
Just as migrant gods and their offspring so often do.
New Story
July 31, 2022, in Science Fiction
“Reality Show”
by Brian K. Lowe
They dismantled Australia today. Just took it apart and packed it in trunks and carried it off to a warehouse somewhere. Theoretically, everybody had already left, but there’s always somebody who doesn’t leave, no matter what the disaster… fire, flood, dissolution of the planet… What happened to those people when the entire set we called the Southern Continent was struck and hauled away?
I don’t really want to know.
Oh, and I’m having lunch with my agent today.
A Reprise
In Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales
July 23, in Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales
by Brenda W. Clough
Odysseus lay still, struggling for every breath, and recited to himself all the perils he had escaped: Scylla and hungry Charybdis, the Cyclops, angry Ajax, Hector with his bright bronze sword, kingly Priam and bright doomed Achilles. I, Odysseus, I survived all these. I came alive out of Troy. I returned home safe after ten years’ journeying. And I will live to laugh at this fool injury. Heroes cannot die in sickbed, with weeping all around. We die in the bitter clash of armor and swords on the plains of windy Troy, leaving a corpse to be fought over by gods and men. Or we yell brass-lunged defiance and go down in a wallow of cold water as the bronze-headed rams cleave the ship into planks and floating rags…
A New Story
In Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales
May 30, 2022, in Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales
by T.R. Frazier
I’d seen the sea wear many colors: the heavy gray of the lead vats I stirred each night; the sullen yellow of the unripe dye they held; the shifting green as the dye warmed and matured; the gentle blue as the long-awaited prized color began to emerge.
But the day the Cilician pirates bore me away, the sea wore Tyrian purple.
The illustrations are based on photographs used with the kind permission of Mohammed Ghassen Nouira.
Please check out his facebook page where he has chronicled his years of work renewing the ancient methods of creating authentic Tyrian Purple dye.
New Story
April 28, 2022, in Fantasy
Up Sticks
by Liam Hogan
It took three and a half weeks for 24, Fell Street, to go looking for its owner,
finding, as it went, traces of him,
memories like woodsmoke at the beginning of Autumn.
Beyond a park the trail was strong, and soon 24 stood before 37, Toft Close.
But 37 Toft Close was dark and empty…
New Story
April 23, 2022, in Fantasy
for St. George’s Day
Artwork © Scott Gustafson. All rights reserved. For more information please visit www.scottgustafson.com
The Trial of St. George
by Andrew Jensen
After one has retired from dragon slaying, one would expect that that’s the end of it.
Time now for sainthood, congratulatory dinners, and ribbon cutting. Then settle down and enjoy retirement.
Not quite.
New Review
March 29, 2022, in Reviews and Interviews
Review of
Bridging Worlds:
Global Conversations on Creating Pan-African Speculative Literature In A Pandemic
edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
This anthology contains 18 essays from speculative fiction writers, editors, and publishers on the African continent and from the African diaspora.
In these essays each writer speaks honestly and articulately about themselves and their personal and professional lives. Though sometimes lyric, sometimes densely packed with meaning, sometimes moving quietly or wildly over the heavy weight of underlying history and emotion, the writing is mostly straightforward and immediately accessible.
The variety of experiences and approaches so clearly and straightforwardly detailed created bridges of understanding. So please, go on walkabout through Bridging Worlds; it is a worthwhile journey.
It is available as a free download in multiple formats from the publisher, Jembefola Press https://jembefola.com
A New Story
In Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales
March 20, 2022, in Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales
H.B. Stonebridge
Some folks would tell you Major Graham got what he deserved for calling up the Devil. But Devil is an ignorant man’s word for something he don’t understand. Major just got tangled up with something he didn’t know nothing about, and it bit him.
We like to think we know what we’re doing, but mostly we don’t, and don’t know we don’t. And the wisest way to deal with the Devil is not to do it. I can do it, of course, otherwise not doing it wouldn’t count.
I just know better.
Most of the time.
A New Story
In Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales
March 10, 2022, in Myths, Legends, & Fairy Tales
“Looking Glass With Golden Flecks”
In the stillness before dawn, when the world sleeps save for fairies and magic, the queen stares into her mirror. Eldritch characters glow along its edge as they did long ago, when as a young woman she took a wrong turn down her old village road and came upon an herbalist’s cottage…
…and a mirror caught her eye. She’d see her futures there, Every path altered by each decision she made.
But the cost?
New Story
February 25, 2022, in Fantasy
Maggoty Meg Flies Up the Mountain
by Jonathan Lenore Kastin
The beautiful children were the cruelest.
As Meg went about her chores they would follow, chanting rude rhymes and throwing stones until she was bruised from shins to shoulders.
She was not going to let them terrorize her any longer.
It was time to see the witch.
New Story
for Valentine’s Day
February 14, 2022, in Fantasy
“Love Potion”
by Anne E.G. Nydam
Xyblik’s Cosmic Emporium had stood for as long as anyone could remember at the corner of Elm Street and Hillside. The proprietor was an Old One, all writhing tentacles and slime, who bubbled cheerfully at his customers and loved nothing better than a good gossip. Abby Dimmock took this into consideration when pondering the best time to purchase a love potion. He would chat if she came when the Emporium was empty, and she was in no mood to chat about the sorry state of her love life.
Illustrations by Anne E.G. Nydam
A New Story
In Fantasy
January 25, 2022, in Fantasy
“Crow Born”
by David Far
Caught. Pinioned. A human squinted at me. I flew up, desperate to escape, against the thatched roof, against the barred windows, up the fireplace chimney into a metal grill. I fell into the ashes.
The human grabbed me. “Do you understand me?”
Meanings blinked in and out, swirled through my mind, came into focus. Human sounds rolled up my throat, too round, unnatural, half choking me. “Yeeess!”
“I gave you the spark,” he said. “I bound us together.”
He stuffed me into an iron cage. “Only death can untie our knot.”
Stories, Podcasts, Interviews, and Articles, 2021:
New Story
December 28, 2021 in Fantasy
“Ghost Blue, Ghost Red”
by Malda Marlys
The world was lousy with monsters. That much Remembrance Wilson took on faith. This town, though, was tense enough with haunting that even the vultures following Remmy’s wagon peeled off early.
Town wasn’t a good prospect. Too many twitchy fingers hovered too near triggers for comfort. Amazing how many people would try to shoot a spook. Remmy gave some honest thought to passing right through, saving her show for the next outpost.
But Dr. Bombastus’s Invigorating Tonic waited for no ghost.
New Fantasy Story
November 27, 2021, in Fantasy
“Yemoja”
by Simbiat Haroun
The band of murderers had been dealt with. The Goddess Yemoja sat silent, cooling her boiling blood.
The sight of the little messenger mermaid, with her slim strands of dreadlocks dancing gracefully about her, soothed Yemoja.
“Great One, the water has brought another foolish swimmer in from the river.”
“The water brings many such. Why tell me of one more?”
“This one is a marvel. She is not drowning.”
Yemoja straightened. “Take me to this marvel.”
New Fantasy poem
for Hallowe’en
at
Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores
October 31, 2021, in Fantasy
by Casey Laine
Don’t stray out onto the moor at night…
New Story
Happy Hallowe’en
October 29, 2021, in Fantasy
by Steve Oden
The pumpkin competition at the Tempest Fall Fair was a bit different than most.
And raising those pumpkins involved a few unusual techniques.
New Story
October 28, 2021 in Eldritch
“The Omaha Zephyr”
by Terri Karsten
Bryce was a modern, no-nonsense young man of the 1890’s.
Until he took the Omaha Zephyr.
A New Story
April 27, 2021, in Science Fiction
“One Good Turn… “
by Alan K. Baker
Varin stared out the viewport. Their crash site was a tortured landscape strewn with bizarrely wind-sculpted boulders. Rain sleeted past in near-horizontal sheets and hammered the ship’s hull. Above the twisted horizon, thick banks of gunmetal clouds seethed like smoke, sculpted into outrageous shapes by the roaring, howling, relentless wind.
And one of the hills was growing briefly, then diminishing, like a grey, warped balloon inflating and deflating… or a lung breathing in and out.
A Reprise
March 31, 2021, in Science Fiction
“When I Close My Eyes”
by Chris Barnham
The rock fall killed me.
I just didn’t know how long it would take to die.
New Interview
February 17, 2021, in Reviews and Interviews
Our Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales editor, Leena, interviewed Ekpeki Oghnechovwe Donald, co-editor of Dominion, a collection of science-fiction, fantasy, horror, and speculative stories told from African and African American perspectives spanning time and space.
In creating their own venue that allows their innate powers of expression free play, this anthology introduces a wider audience to voices that enrich the genre they represent.
New Story for Young People of All Ages
January 30, 2021, in Stories for Young People of All Ages
“The Water Buffalo, the Wanderer, and the Prince”
by Sam Muller
Once upon a time, in a faraway land where people had skins as blue as the sea and hair as white as moonlight, where animals could speak in human words but few humans any longer listened, there lived a girl called Ambha.
Ambha was a human who did listen.
∼ Main Terminal ∼
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