Posts Tagged ‘Dani Daly’

a greyscale image of a ruined stone head

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Cast of Wonders 646: As Brittle as Granite

Cast of Wonders 646: As Brittle as Granite is a Cast of Wonders original.

Death of a parent

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:03 — 24.8MB)

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Image by darrenquigley32 from Pixabay

As Brittle as Granite

by Matt Tighe

Lisa’s father has a crack in his face. It isn’t even a small one, something that she could maybe dismiss as a shadow cutting through the warm afternoon light of the sunroom. It runs from his forehead straight down through his left eye, splits his cheek in half, and just touches the very corner of his top lip. The inside of the crack is grey stone with pale flecks of mineralisation.

“You have cracked, father,” she says. The words come out as they should, steady and measured.

When his eyes move to her, the part of the crack that runs through his eye also moves, sliding sideways with his gaze. He is calm.

“Tell your mother,” he says. (Continue Reading…)

three happy pumpkins on a woodland path

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Cast of Wonders 610: What Cannot Be Cured, Must Be Endured

Cast of Wonders 610: What Cannot Be Cured, Must Be Endured is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:47 — 35.4MB)

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Show Notes

2992 words

What Cannot Be Cured Must Be Endured

by Elisabeth Ring

They say if you take the old scarecrow out back, jam some old leaves in there to make up for some of the straw that’s fallen out, and put a jack-o-lantern on the shoulders where the head used to be, you can make it almost as good as new. And then, if you get the old pill bottle filled with your baby teeth out of your mom’s dresser drawer and shove the tiny white contents into the jack-o-lantern’s wide grin, you can make it come alive. (Continue Reading…)

ice flower

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Cast of Wonders 576: Little Wonders 43 – Young Authors

Cast of Wonders 576: Little Wonders 43 – Young Authors is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:17 — 22.4MB)

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At the Edge of Nowhere

by Peter Gooley

It saddens me to look out my window and see the secrets lying sad and broken across the dusty road. The sprays of wind toss them along, scattering the letters among the little, cream-coloured chunks of gravel. I think that sadness was what made me first start collecting them. I gather the tiny, sparkling thoughts from the dew-painted ground each morning as I tend my garden, like manna from heaven. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 358: A Singular Event in the Fourth Dimension

Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction (March / April 2017)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:08 — 38.1MB)

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A Singular Event in the Fourth Dimension

by Andrea M. Pawley

Olive touched the tiny carbon fiber legs. They folded under her fingertip. The drone was dead. Its accumulator nodes held enough copper to get Olive through the next three days. Papa had always provided Olive with the inorganics she needed, but Papa hadn’t been home much since Mama stopped going to work and the second grandma arrived five days ago.

With her hand curled around the drone, Olive wiggled backward through the sinewy filament holding each living quarters trailer like a barnacle to the side of the elevator. The filament slowed Olive. So did a shortage of metals in her system. None of today’s dead drones carried the gold she needed most.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 338: Earn Your Breath (Staff Picks 2018)

Originally published in Cast of Wonders 294 for Artemis Rising 4, March 6, 2018

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:56 — 33.3MB)

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Show Notes

Every year in January, Cast of Wonders highlights some of our favorite episodes from the previous year. It’s a great chance for us to take a bit of a breather, and let you, our listeners, catch up on any missed back episodes with new commentary from a different member of the crew.

Today’s episode is hosted by community manager Dani Daly.

Earn Your Breath

by Jaime O. Mayer

Liith had fought the Snake Island raiders every summer since her fifteenth year and had yet to taste defeat. She had dueled the boat-men of the north with their fish-belly white skin and won the pair of metal knives envied by many a man in her village. Yet, it was the sight of the latch on the cookshack door that filled her with dread. Gray Stone’s village elders said fate could not be changed, and she would rather die than prove them right. But each passing day brought her twentieth year closer, and her throat remained bare of a breath mark. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 324: The Sound of Her Voice (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 324: The Sound of Her Voice (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

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The Sound of Her Voice

by Jennifer Hykes

I saw her van as I turned the corner by the convenience store.  It was exactly as I remembered it: the coat of green paint cracked and faded now, but the logo unmistakable.  It was burned into my memory like a brand.

I moved before I even realized my old instincts were kicking in, pressing myself against the brick wall and slowing my breathing so the sound would not give me away.

Every nerve in my body tingled.  I watched. I waited.
(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 300: The Death Knight, the Dragon and the Damsel

Cast of Wonders 300: The Death Knight, the Dragon and the Damsel is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:08 — 52.5MB)

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Show Notes

This week’s episode art is from Le livre et la vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre. It details Alexander the Great battling against two-headed, eight-legged, crowned dragons with multiple eyes along their torsos (Royal MS 20 B XX, f. 78v). It dates to between 1420 and 1425 CE.

Music attribution: Village Consort by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Escape Pod’s Flash Fiction contest returns to the Solar System this year, running April 15-30, 2018.

The Death Knight, the Dragon and the Damsel

by Melion Traverse

Cold afternoon light stretched in thin patches on the stone floor of the great hall. Jaw and guts tight and trembling, I stood at attention with twenty other squires, armor clean and new as our hopeful futures. For four years, we had trained with sword and shield under the patronage of Duke Amlick. Four years tinged in blood and exhaustion. All for the hope that one of the knights roaming among our lines would pick us from the group like a hound pup plucked from its litter. Twenty squires and only twelve knights—Duke Amlick believed his knights ought to have options. Eight of us would go home with tails between our legs.

One by one the knights claimed their squires and I watched my companions go to their new lives, eyes bright with the glory they would win. I stood with eyes half-closed against the fear that I would be left. I, Cori Forsmire, from one of Duke Amlick’s oldest houses, would have to sell my sword as a common guard. What was I going to tell my father?
(Continue Reading…)

Announcing Assistant Editor Alexis Goble!

We’re pleased to announce that Alexis Goble, long-time slush pile wrangler, has taken the editorial leap and will be joining Katherine Inskip as co-assistant editor of Cast of Wonders.

Alexis cut her teeth this year as assistant editor for 2018’s Artemis Rising showcase, working with Katherine and Dani Daly, who will remain Cast of Wonders’ community manager while focusing her energies on StoryTime Soap Company (check them out!)

Dani says:

I would like to say that being part of the editorial team of Cast of Wonders has been incredibly rewarding, and I am both honored and humbled to have been provided the opportunity. I have learned a lot and interacted with some fabulously talented people, some of which I am now thrilled to call friend.

And head over to our forum this autumn, when Dani will be running the Cast of Wonders flash fiction contest.

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Cast of Wonders 297: Where You Get Your Ideas (Artemis Rising 4)

Cast of Wonders 297: Where You Get Your Ideas (Artemis Rising 4) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:50 — 21.5MB)

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Show Notes

Cast of Wonders is proud to present the fourth annual Artemis Rising event through March 2018! We have four original stories for you this year, guest-edited by assistant editor Katherine Inskip and associate editor Alexis Goble. This year’s artwork by Geneva Barton.

Artemis Rising is an annual month-long event across all four Escape Artists podcasts, celebrating the voices of women, non-binary, trans, and marginalized gendered authors in genre fiction. The resulting lineup is an incredible collection that celebrates the strength, ingenuity, and brilliance of the artists, the characters they create, and the performers that bring these stories to life. It also features the hosting, editing and production talents of a rotating cast. Part of the project’s mission is to give opportunities and experience in these publication roles traditionally held by men.

Don’t miss the full month of Artemis Rising stories across the Escape Artists podcasts!

Where You Get Your Ideas

by Megan Lee Beals

Bells chimed in the empty storefront that waited for us at the top of the stairs. The boss closed her eyes and tilted her head to assess their tone.

“Iron, pitched low, minimal tuning. It’s probably high fantasy up there.”

I shrugged over the collection of banshee skulls I was cleaning for a future wind-chime. “Cool.” I was her subordinate, and the fantasy upstairs would need a young apprentice to cast aside before she could make a grand entrance as some wizened old shopkeeper.

Were it the eerie insectoid hum of space-opera, I’d answer as the rookie, but the roles are pretty much the same.
(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 287: Wished (Staff Picks 2017)

Cast of Wonders 287: Wished (Staff Picks 2017) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:17 — 31.7MB)

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Show Notes

Every year in January, Cast of Wonders takes the month off to recharge, plan the year ahead and highlight some of our favorite episodes. Throughout the month, different members of the Cast of Wonders crew will present their favorite story of 2017.

This week’s episode is hosted by assistant editor Dani Daly.

Wished

by Amanda Helms

The wishing well discovered its meaning in existence only through a case of mistaken semantics. In point of fact, it started its existence not as a wishing well but as a decorative fountain. In point of another fact, it was sentient, all of which is most unusual for either a decorative fountain or a wishing well.

The way these three unusual things came to be is this:

On one summer solstice, a mother and her toddler stopped by the decorative fountain in the middle of Longview Mall, a middling shopping center located in a middling town in middling America.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 277: Little Wonders 15: Monster Mayhem!

Brothers in Stitches is a Cast of Wonders original!
Got Cookies? was originally published in the Alternate Hilarities 2: Vampires Suck! anthology (Strange Musings Press, 2014)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:19 — 27.5MB)

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Show Notes

The Little Wonders theme “Neversus” is by Alexye Nov, available from Promo DJ or his Facebook page.

Brothers in Stitches

by Dantzel Cherry

I’m sorry to say Master lay charred and inert on the laboratory floor for a good quarter hour before I noticed he was dead. I regret pulling the wrong lever, resulting in an overflow of electricity from the storm, the brunt of which Master received, resulting in his death and a ruined experiment. I’m even sorrier to admit I then ate all his internal organs before I remembered to offer any to Harry the moaning subject chained to the metal chair in the middle of the room or to the rest of my brothers-in-stitches in the downstairs dungeon.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 271: The Lives Beneath (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 271: The Lives Beneath (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:16 — 38.1MB)

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Show Notes

Don’t miss our other Banned Books Week episodes.

Theme music is “Appeal to Heavens” by Alexye Nov, available from Promo DJ or his Facebook page.

The Lives Beneath

by Katherine Inskip

She felt it in her bones first: a sideways jolting of reality, as if she’d had her feet swept out from under her while in the middle of a headlong run. Caught wrong-footed, Enys staggered. She clutched at the open passenger door of Tay Slighter’s van, steadying herself as an aching groan built to a crescendo inside her spine, her reflection trembling in the wing mirror.

It was happening, then. It was actually happening! Eight long years of airdrops and broadcasts and public professings, of tactical insertions and skirmishes over thoroughfares, of daily liturgies and the night-time cleansings… and finally, finally, the Curacy were moving on the rebel’s Spire!

(Continue Reading…)