Author Topic: PseudoPod 561: Better to Curse the Darkness than Light a Candle  (Read 3678 times)

Bdoomed

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PseudoPod 561: Better to Curse the Darkness than Light a Candle

by Joseph Cusumano.

“Better to Curse the Darkness than Light a Candle” is a PseudoPod original. The story was inspired by the works of Poe and Hawthorne.

JOSEPH CUSUMANO is a physician living in St. Louis. His major hobby, other than writing, is the design and construction of radio controlled airplanes. His piloting skills need a lot of work. His writing in 2016 has been accepted by Crimson Streets, Mystery Weekly, Disturbed Digest, Flash Fiction Press, Heater, and Litmag (University of Missouri).

This week’s reader – Cheyenne Wright is a freelance illustrator and concept artist. He is the color artist on the three-time Hugo Award winning steampunk graphic novel series Girl Genius, and co-creator of many other fine works; Including 50 Fathoms and the Ennie award winning Deadlands Noir for the Savage Worlds RPG. He has also produced graphics for Star Trek Online, the Champions MMO, and t-shirt designs for T.V.’s Alton Brown. He lives in Seattle with his wife, their daughter, and an ever growing stack of unpainted miniatures. In his spare time he is teaching himself animation, and narrates short stories for a variety of audio anthologies where he is known as Podcasting’s Mr. Buttery ManVoice ™




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Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.



Check out PAPERBACKS FROM HELL by Grady Hendrix. Listen to the interview on the Know Fear Podcast with Grady and Will Erikson about the book and the paperback boom of the 70’s and 80’s.



They mockingly call me “Diogenes,” believing my lantern is carried merely to illuminate my path each night through the dark streets of Philadelphia. Yet it is not an honest man for whom I search, but a scoundrel, a liar, an adulterer, a thief, a murderer – ideally someone who has been all of these – for I must find a soul darker than my own.

This quest resulted from an earlier and more innocent one, first undertaken while I was a young man blissfully wed to Patience, who brimmed with optimism over what heaven had apparently planned for us. Not content with the considerable success that I enjoyed as the proprietor of Silsbury Shipping Company, I sought more wealth, the respect of Philadelphia’s business and merchant class, and especially the adoration that Patience showered upon me with each step my growing business took. On the occasion of my boasting to her that I now employed upwards of fifty men who labored on my behalf, moving goods from our warehouses to multiple sites hundreds of miles west, she swelled with pride in my accomplishment and even her passions were aroused.



Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


canoehead

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Reply #1 on: October 01, 2017, 08:44:35 AM
Another one I couldn't follow, but it seems clearer in print.



Katzentatzen

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Reply #2 on: October 30, 2017, 04:51:02 PM
The vicious cycle of evil feeding on evil! Crime doesn’t pay.

"To understand a cat you must realize that he has his own gifts, his own viewpoint, even his own morality."
--LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN


Michael W. Cho

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Reply #3 on: November 15, 2017, 03:18:01 AM
Cool, old-school, Edgar Allen Poe-ish tale. The narrator nailed it.



Ichneumon

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Reply #4 on: December 10, 2017, 08:16:36 PM
I liked it! It felt like it could have been set in any time period and still work well. I also like how the witches were of questionable morality, but encouraged the main character not to be greedy and were still less damned then he was. The title fits well.