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Cast of Wonders 219: Dinosaur Dreams in Infinite Measure (Dinovember!)

Originally published Writers of the Future Vol 32

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:59 — 32.7MB)

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Show Notes

A special thank you to Preston Stone for his generous permission in using this week’s episode artwork!

Theme music is “Appeal to Heavens” by Alexye Nov, available at MusicAlley.com.

Read along with the text of the story.

Dinosaur Dreams in Infinite Measure

by Rachael K. Jones

Mom had hands like dinosaur bones: fragile at a glance, but old and strong, hardened by time and pressure. Fossils endure. My mother had endured 80 years already, through disease and bereavement, through a long career ended in humiliation and disgrace, and now this final insult: her own daughter demanding she leave it all behind, the house and farm and everything in it.

“I’ve worked hard for this house. I worked for everything I ever had.” Her voice was a tight, tense warble. Fossil-hard fingers bent around a mug painted with a cowgirl on a lavender T-rex, lasso roping round the handle.

It wasn’t just the house, not really. Primrose Farms Poultry had forced her from her life’s work as an industrial engineer, and thanks to an intellectual property clause, Mom hadn’t even kept the rights to her own inventions.

“No one’s trying to take away your stuff,” I told her gently. “We’re just worried about you, alone out here and with the animals, and the house like this.” The farm was expensive, too. The upkeep outstripped its worth.

“I can take care of it myself. I’ll clean it up. I just need time.”

(Continue Reading…)

Down for Maintenance (13 November 2016)

Hello all, a quick note to let you know we’re taking the site down for a few hours to try and repair the RSS feed issues. You may have difficulty accessing some or all of our stories while the work is ongoing.

Thanks for your patience! In the meantime, have you checked out the great personal essays over at the Pseudopod Kickstarter? A pledge as little as $10 gets your a digital copy of ‘Of Mortal Things Unsung’, their first anthology.

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Cast of Wonders 218: Saurs (Dinovember!)

Cast of Wonders 218: Saurs (Dinovember!) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:03 — 29.7MB)

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Show Notes

Special thanks to Emma Thompson for the use of her photograph in this week’s episode art, featuring her three adorable dinosaur lovers.

And if you’ve a hankerin’ for a weird western that lets you fight an undead T-Rex, check out Deadlands! And tell Shane, Clint and Jodi I sent you.

Saurs

by Craig DeLancey

The fossil mages gathered in the shadow of the gully.  Four of them: three old men and a young woman. Old Jim lifted and replaced his wreck of a straw hat and then spat at a scorpion.  John Bloodeye and Harry watched the dark spot in the sand evaporate in the heat, until finally, as they’d all been hoping, the young one spoke.

“I found it near here,” Karyn Thomson said.   She put her hand into her pocket, fingering the bone there, but not drawing it out yet.

The three old men waited. This was hard for them. They’d all been famous, in their day.  They had their pride still.

Finally Karyn tugged the bone out.  A hooked talon, as long as her own hand.  The old men leaned forward, careful not to show excitement but unable to keep their eyes from popping.

“T rex,” Bloodeye said.  “Manus claw. Left interior.”

Karyn nodded agreement.

“It looks big,” Old Jim said.  “It looks as big as the claw on that old girl your Pa found out here.”

“Bigger,” Karyn said.  “Two centimeters longer.”  She pushed her hat back with the point of the claw.  Blond hair spilled out over her eyes.

Harry reached toward the claw.  Karyn flinched, but did not draw back.  He touched the fossil with two dry fingers.  “Lot of hum to it,” he whispered. The other men did not comment.  They knew there’d be magic in the bone. No need to taunt yourself, like hungry men poking another man’s fat goose.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 217: Boys’ Night

Cast of Wonders 217: Boys’ Night is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:57 — 29.4MB)

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Boys’ Night

by Rebecca Birch

Walter Ocherman rolled along the two-lane highway at five miles an hour under the speed limit, scanning the road’s left-hand side for the turn-off to his uncle’s old pumpkin farm.  Marked by nothing more than a dilapidated sign-post that might once have been green, the overgrown dirt road hidden between two poplars was easy to miss on a good day. The fog that rolled in off the river made finding the place harder, but nothing was going to wipe the grin off Walter’s lips.  Today was Halloween and his ex, Minnie, had agreed to let their son come out to the farm with him for the night. Their first boys’ night in almost a year.

>He glanced at Jason, who had spread his twelve-year old self over the back seat an hour ago, his straw-blond head pillowed on a stuffed pumpkin Walter had picked up at a yard sale to help set the holiday mood.  His steady zzz-snerk snore could have been annoying, but Walter got so few chances to hear it that he turned off the radio. The news was depressing anyway, trying to settle a fog over more than just the river valley.

Walter looked back at the road just in time to glimpse the turn-off.  He slammed on the brakes and torqued the wheel, holding his instinctive curse-word behind his teeth.  His 1984 Civic’s gears squealed a skull-piercing protest and the right front bumper just missed colliding with a poplar.  A sudden pressure in the back of his seat told him Jason was awake and braced.

Walter brought the car to a dead stop, his heart thudding.

“Jesus, Dad!  If we die, mom’s going to kill you.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 216: This Story Begins With You (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 216: This Story Begins With You (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:14 — 33.5MB)

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Show Notes

The Comic Book Legal Defence Fund is a non-profit dedicated to protecting the First Amendment rights of the comics medium and is an annual sponsor of Banned Books Week. Founded in 1986, the CBLDF has managed and paid for the legal defense of artists, worked with libraries to resist challenged to comics and graphic novels, and undertaken advocacy work against unconstitutional proposed legitlation at the state and Federal level.

This Story Begins With You

by Rachael K. Jones

The story goes that your dad got a new job.

The story goes that you moved 5,000 miles away. You didn’t know anyone in your new town, and none of them knew you.

You had a best friend in your old town named Marco, but you left him behind. You had a playground on your old street. A favorite climbing tree. A secret hideout behind the garden shed made from plywood and latticed tree branches, papered with mildewed books the library had thrown out after the classics section flooded.

The story goes that losing all of this felt like a part of you had died. You cried a lot. That bothered your parents. You didn’t want them to feel guilty, so after a while you only cried when you were alone.

The story goes that you were the new kid in 9th grade. A well-meaning history teacher bumped a girl with an amethyst bracelet from her desk so you could take a seat near the front, but the girl’s friends glared at you, the intruder, the cuckoo squeezed into the wrong nest. You’d just arrived, and they already hated your guts.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 215: Problematic (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 215: Problematic (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:34 — 22.8MB)

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Show Notes

Learn more about The Freedom to Read Foundation, an advocacy group that deals with a wide range of issues affecting our freedom of speech and our right to access information. A growing part of their mission is to educate librarians, library patrons, and the general public about issues related to the freedom to read and our right to access information.

 

Problematic

by Brian Hurrel

The Main Office is as spartan as the the rest of the campus. Three plain gray metal folding chairs arranged in front of Headmistress Dinali’s equally plain and unadorned wooden desk. In one of the chairs the slim ten-year- old frame of Luna Vega-MacPherson squirms restlessly, twisting strands of dark curly hair around a forefinger, and not at all trying to disguise her boredom. In the other two chairs sit her parents, looking equally uncomfortable but for different reasons.

I confess to taking some degree of pleasure in the final phase of the application process. Call it a guilty pleasure, but I do so enjoy seeing overbearing parents humbled. Since the Banks Institute is self-financing, and offers only full scholarships or flat out rejection, those of means have no more influence than those without.
(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 214: The Price of Stories (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 214: The Price of Stories (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:15 — 18.0MB)

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Show Notes

Learn more about Stop Hate and their work to challenge all forms of hate crime and discrimination based on any aspect of an individual’s identity.

The Price of Stories

by Shannon Winward

Mother is not the real librarian. You think she has always been here, but that’s the magic working.

The real librarian – the one who issued your first library card, painted castles in the reading room and taught you about elephants – she never existed, now. That’s why you don’t remember.

But don’t worry; she’ll be back. 

Mother doesn’t come for the librarians.
(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 213: Beneath the Loveliest Tints of Azure

Originally published in Lore Vol. 2 (November 30, 2013)

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:21 — 28.0MB)

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Beneath the Loveliest Tints of Azure

by Jeff Samson

“You sure picked a hell of a day to start.”

The guard stared up at Ted with a look somewhere between aggravation and indifference. He slouched over his desk, his belly spilling over a portion of its tidy surface. His chair creaked in protest as he swiveled lazily. 

“I’m sorry?” Ted said, deepening his voice to match the guard’s husky bass.

The guard wiped a hand over his head, polished bald but for a faint horseshoe of salt and pepper hair buzzed to the same length as the patchy stubble on his face. He pushed himself away from his desk, growling as he rose.

“Ken Allen,” he said, enveloping Ted’s comparably slight hand in a powerful grip.

“Ted Kirsch.” Ted stifled an urge to wince.

“I know–Hurrel’s replacement. Been expecting you.” Ken pursed his lips. “Sorry if I seem a bit gruff. It’s just, well, visiting days aren’t exactly best for breaking in fresh meat. Know what I mean?”

Ted nodded that he did. Then quickly realized that he didn’t.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 212: Selling Home

Originally appeared in Bull Spec (Issue 6)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:29 — 36.4MB)

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Selling Home

by Tina Connolly

Sharp metal nicked Penny’s shoulder and she stumbled, hand clasping her baby brother’s leg.  Home giggled as her knees hit the asphalt. Penny felt for the bit of metal scrap as the cars inched past, above, below, up and down all the decks of the Bridge.

“Mo, mo,” demanded Home, and she absently tickled his foot as she stood.  It was a rusting bit of hubcap, sharp and warm. The day was dusk now, the sun vanishing in smog, but she didn’t need to see perfectly to gauge its value.

“That’s a bottle’s worth for you,” she said to the baby as she tucked the metal in her scrap bag.

(Continue Reading…)

Where to find Cast of Wonders at WorldCon

Hello everyone!

Cast of Wonders’ editor and host, Marguerite Kenner, will be at WorldCon in Kansas City, Missouri this week. You can find her on the following panels as well as roaming the halls. Come say hello, and get a Cast of Wonders badge ribbon!

Creative Commons Rights for Creators and Fans

Artemis Rising 3

artemis rising 2-005-iTunes-Small

For the last two years, February has been Artemis Rising month across the Escape Artists’s podcasts. The event returns in March 2017, and for the first time Cast of Wonders will be joining the month-long showcase of stories by women and nonbinary authors in genre fiction.

Submissions for new short fiction will run September 1st through 30th at our Submittable portal. Anyone who identifies as a woman, to whatever degree they do, and non-binary authors are welcome and encouraged to submit a story.

Our fellow EA podcasts are also taking original submissions for the event. Please visit EscapePod for science fiction, Pseudopod for horror, and Podcastle for fantasy.

As always, we strongly encourage submissions from people of backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented or excluded in fiction, including, but not limited to, people of color, LGBTQ authors, persons with disabilities, members of religious minorities, and people from outside the United States. Cast of Wonders strives to publish fiction that reflects the diversity of the human race, so we strongly encourage submissions from these or any other underrepresented groups.

Here’s a summary of the details:

  • Payment at $0.06 per word. Please see our general Submission Guidelines for a description of the rights we purchase and our sample contracts.
  • Original stories only.
  • Word count: 2000 – 6000 words. We’re looking for stand-alone short stories, not flash.
  • Submit using a BLIND manuscript format. Check here for an example.
  • No multiple submissions. One story per author.
  • No simultaneous submissions. Decisions will be finalized by December 1, 2016.
  • Submission window runs September 1-30.

We look forward to reading your fiction!

Sincerely,

Marguerite Kenner, Editor
Dani Daly and Katherine Inskip, Assistant Editors,
and the entire Cast of Wonders editorial team – Elvis Afriyie, Olivia Denholm, Sally Gill, Alexis Goble, Andrew Kim and Setsu Uzume

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 211: Indian Rope Trick

Originally appeared in Bards and Sages Quarterly (April 2012)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:55 — 14.8MB)

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Indian Rope Trick

by James Fitzsimmons

“Careful not to drop that on your head,” Edson Vole warned, pointing to the huge beveled mirror leaning against the wall. “Unless, of course, you know the Indian rope trick.”

Sanjeev Ravi laughed, clipping a tape measure onto his utility belt. “No such thing, Mr. Vole,” he said in a gentle lilt. 

“That mirror weighs a ton,” Edson said. “Couldn’t lift that even during my days in New Delhi. Back in an hour.”

(Continue Reading…)