Pseudopod 353: FLASH ON THE BORDERLANDS XVII: Keeping Up AppearancesThings are not always as they seem…
“Down By The Sea Near The Great Big Rock” by Joe R. LansdaleThis story first appeared in
MASQUES (1984).
JOE R. LANSDALE, who recently appeared here with
PSEUDOPOD #344: The Pit, has written over thirty books, and numerous short stories. He has won a multitude of awards, including the Edgar for his novel
THE BOTTOMS, and his novella
BUBBA HO-TEP was made into the popular film starring Bruce Campbell. His current books are
THE THICKET and
EDGE OF DARK WATER, both from
Mulholland Books. Joe blogs
here and you can also follow him on
Facebook.
Read by
Corson Bremer, who lives in France and has dual nationality, but is American by birth. Corson works as a professional voice actor, technical communicator, and French-to-English translator. He is also a life-long curmudgeon. His professional credits in voice acting include audio guides, industrial video narration, e-learning, radio and tv commercials, and video games for Ubisoft (
Red Steel 2 and
Petz:Horses 2) and Spiders (
Mars:War Logs). He’s a big fan of dramatic readings as well as radio drama and comedy. Check out
HCBVoice.com for his voice services and demos. Corson is a board member of
Voice Artists United, an organization for established and up-and-coming voice actors who are looking for support, community, education, and information. If you are a voice actor, find them at the link under their name or on Facebook and LinkedIn.
“Down by the sea near the great big rock, they made their camp and toasted marshmallows over a small, fine fire. The night was pleasantly chill and the sea spray cold. Laughing, talking, eating the gooey marshmallows, they had one swell time; just them, the sand, the sea and the sky, and the great big rock. “
“The Demon Fields” by Keith McCleary“The Demon Fields” has been performed in San Diego, and can be found at
Gchatus, but Pseudopod is its first published appearance. “It was written in California while thinking of the summers I spent at my grandmother’s house in Vermont as a child. It’s also my girlfriend’s favorite piece of mine, so she should get some credit for its submission.”
KEITH McCLEARY is an MFA student at
UCSD, and received his BFA in Film at
NYU. His work has or is due to appear in
Heavy Metal magazine,
Weave,
Flash,
Short Fast and Deadly, the
San Diego Poetry Annual, and in comic books he has written and illustrated for
Terminal Press. He has also served as a copyeditor for
Kill Screen Magazine. Keith maintains a semi-regular presence at his flash fiction tumblr,
Gchatus and his website,
Weird Things I Have Done.
Read by
Kevin Hayes – Kevin is a man of many facets. Hailing from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, he is overactively involved in the Science Fiction/Fantasy and Horror Community where he has done (and continues to do) programming for the usually annual SF conference
Confluence – July 25th to 27th, 2014. He is a writer, a reader, an actor, a singer, a poet, and a cartoonist/illustrator – and that’s just in his spare time. He thrives with his artistic endeavors and lives with a hugely talented woman who shares his interests and is the passion of his life (they have collaborated on a novel that defies easy description for which they still try to find a publishing home). The home they have made for themselves also contains three of her five children, artists, writers and performers all. Kevin’s website can be found
here and he also one of the driving members of a writers’ critique group called
Write Or Die! (aka “
WorD”) who meet at a local bookshop. He has a story appearing in “TV Gods” from
Fortress Publishing, available May/June 2014, and he appears in a photo-graphic comic from
Tia Tormen Productions called “[b=http://www.amazon.com/Zombimboz-Zombimbopocalypse-Tia-Tormen/dp/0985935456/]
Zombimboz[/b]” on sale now on Amazon!
“One day, one of the farmhands mustered the courage to ask him what the barn was all about. Ben squinted at the structure in the distance, picked a reed to chew on and crossed his burly arms across his barrel chest. ‘Well boys,’ he said. ‘That barn’s gonna hold my demons. Ev’ry man’s got ‘em. Gotta get ‘em stored away if I ever want to share this farm with someone. Can’t have ‘em runnin’ loose, now can I?’ and he smiled.”
“Pawn” by Jaki IdlerA shorter version of “Pawn” was a Semifinalist in the
2010 Escape Pod flash contest, where it was titled “Queen.”
Jaki Idler lives outside Philadelphia where she writes, teaches and – despite any literary evidence to the contrary – raises two wonderful boys. Her day job is bringing other’s stories to life. You can follow her writing at
Idle Truths. She just narrated her own story “Terminal” for
Wicked Women Writers 2012 at
HorrorAddicts.net. She’s also thrilled to read Crystal Connor’s “Spores” on
podiobooks.com (pending).
Your reader,
Julia Rios, is a writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator. She’s one of the three fiction editors for
Strange Horizons and hosts the
Outer Alliance Podcast (celebrating QUILTBAG speculative fiction). Check her out at her blog
here.
“The pain of pushing the larva through the very flesh of my transgression should be punishment enough. But mating was the Queen’s privilege, not the bait’s, and she’d ensure I’d rather die than overstep again. She called the lair witness, lest my lesson bear repeating. I squatted and bore down, slave to more primeval powers. My lair sisters ringed the cavern, tall and smug, every stiff spine saying they knew better. I’d known better.”
Help Gail Carriger get CRUDRAT up and running by checking out:
CRUDRAT!
Interstitial music is “Fearless Bleeder” by
Chimpy, from
Music Alley.
Listen to this week's Pseudopod.
