Cast of Wonders

• Narrated by Alex Hofelich • Guest host Setsu Uzume • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • A Cast of Wonders original! • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes A special thank you to our audio producer Jeremy Carter for the excellent photo in this week’s episode artwork. Check out his Etsy shop, On The Edge Photos. Elise Forier Edie is an author and playwright based in Los Angeles. Her speculative fiction has been published in anthologies and magazines, and her plays have been performed throughout the US and Canada. Recent works include the short story Lucy in the Sky, about a little girl at war with the fairy queen, published this summer in The Enchanted Conversation, and the forthcoming, Backwater Saints, about rock bands and necromancers in the Florida everglades, due out in Disturbed Digest in December. Her play The Pink Unicorn, about a Christian widow grappling with her teenaged daughter’s announcement that she is genderqueer, will be playing in Pittsburgh in January 2017 at Off the Wall. You […]

• Narrated by Dani Daly • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • Originally published Writers of the Future Vol 32 • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes A special thank you to Preston Stone for his generous permission in using this week’s episode artwork! Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, an addiction to running, and a couple of degrees. Now she writes speculative fiction in Athens, Georgia, where she lives with her husband. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in many venues including Shimmer, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, EscapePod, InterGalactic Medicine Show, and The Drabblecast. She is a SFWA member and a secret android. Follow her on online or on Twitter.       Your narrator is our own wonderful assistant editor, community manager, and flash fiction contest runner Dani Daly. You can follow her on Twitter or say hello over at the EA forum.         Issue 5 of Mothership […]

• Narrated by Marguerite Kenner • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • A Cast of Wonders original! • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes Craig Delancey’s YA novel Gods of Earth is available from 47 North Press. He lives in upstate New York and, in addition to writing, teaches philosophy at Oswego State, part of the State University of New York. Stop by his web site, of follow him on Twitter.         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. Theme music is “Appeal to Heavens” by Alexye Nov, available at MusicAlley.com. Read along with the text of the story.

• Narrated by Dave Thompson • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • A Cast of Wonders original! • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes Rebecca Birch is a science fiction and fantasy writer based in Seattle, Washington. She’s a classically trained soprano, holds a deputy black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and enjoys spending time in the company of trees. Her fiction has appeared in markets including Nature, Cricket, and Flash Fiction Online. She is also a two-time finalist in the Writers of the Future contest. Check our her website, Words of Birch, or Twitter.       Dave Thompson is a teacher who lives in Southern California with his wife, three children, and eight chickens. He is an author, narrator, and sometimes Escape Artist who keeps getting pulled back in for one last job. (Actually, he always hopes it’s never the last job.) He’s lost NaNoWriMo twice and is the former editor of PodCastle. He doesn’t like to talk about himself in the third person, but he finds he […]

• Narrated by Jen R. Albert • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • A Cast of Wonders original! • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, an addiction to running, and a couple of degrees. Now she writes speculative fiction in Athens, Georgia, where she lives with her husband. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in many venues including Shimmer, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, EscapePod, InterGalactic Medicine Show, and The Drabblecast. She is a SFWA member and a secret android. Follow her on online or on Twitter.     Jen R. Albert is an entomologist, writer of science fiction and fantasy, gamer, and (in her own words) all around geek. She is co-editor at PodCastle and submissions editor at Uncanny. Her first story appeared in Mad Scientist Journal in June 2015. You can follow her online or on Twitter.       The Comic Book Legal Defence Fund […]

• Narrated by Kaushik Narasimhan • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • Originally appeared in Bards and Sages Quarterly (April 2012) • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes James Fitzsimmons holds a BA in English from California State University, Los Angeles where he studied literature and creative writing. He works as a computer programmer and lives in Long Beach CA. His interests include music, theater, musical theater, and fiction. James says that writing a computer program is much like writing a story, but hopes his stories have fewer bugs! Kaushik Narasimhan is a management consultant by day, writer by night and psychonaut every weekend. Follow him online or on Twitter.           Theme music is “Appeal to Heavens” by Alexye Nov, available at MusicAlley.com. Read along with the text of the story.

• Authors: Adam Gaylord and J. J. Litke • Narrators: Dani Daly and Katherine Inskip • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • The There-It-Is Store originally appeared in T. Gene Davis’s Speculative Fiction Blog. • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes Our first story is The There-It-Is Store by Adam Gaylord, originally published on T. Gene Davis’s Speculative Fiction Blog. Adam lives with his wife and daughter in Loveland, Colorado where he’s rarely more than ten feet from either cake or craft beer. His recently released gladiatorial fantasy novel Sol of the Coliseum is all about hope (as in, he hopes you’ll read it). Follow him on Goodreads or his infrequently updated blog. Your narrator for this story is Dani Daly, our newly minted assistant editor. Dani lives, works, dreams and plays on Long Island, New York with a husband and some cats. She is on Twitter often and updates her blog on very rare occassions when something extra special happens. All her links are available on our newly updated […]

Hello all, re-posting the episode as there was a problem with the file repeating part one of the audio. • Narrated by Paul Cram • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • Originally published in Writers of the Future (Volume 31) • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes Krystal Claxton writes speculative fiction in the sliver of time between being a parent and a full-time computer technician. She lives in Georgia with her long-suffering spouse, a dog who thinks she’s a cat, and a number of children that is subject to change. She enjoys breaking Heinlein’s Rules, getting distracted by DragonCon, and feverishly researching whichever random topic has just piqued her interest. You can keep up with her online at and on Twitter.       The very first story Paul Cram ever narrated was here at Cast of Wonders, and he seems to have been bit by the bug. While Paul still considers his voice to be somewhat new to the world of audio, he now has a few full-length […]

• Narrated by Mat Weller • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • Originally appeared in Allasso (Volume 3) • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes Mary E. Lowd is a science fiction and furry author; her husband Daniel Lowd is a computer science professor. You can learn more about Mary’s writing online. The sequel to this story, the novella When a Cat Loves a Dog, won an Ursa Major Award! Mat Weller is the servant to a lovely family in eastern Pennsylvania. After his wife and kids go to sleep at night, he sometimes re-watches old episodes of X-Files on Netflix and other times retires to his basement booth where he records noises that get played on the Internet. Rumor has it he also makes delightful chocolate chip cookies. Learn more by following him online or on Twitter.       Theme music is “Appeal to Heavens” by Alexye Nov, available at MusicAlley.com. Read along with the text of the story.

• Narrated by Katherine Inskip • Originally appeared in Wolves and Witches: A Fairy Tale Collection (2013) • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes Amanda C. Davis writes dark fantasy, light horror, and the very softest science fiction. She has an engineering degree and an obsession with baking the perfect macaron. Her short fiction and poetry was collected in 2013 along with her sister Megan Engelhardt‘s work in Wolves and Witches: A Fairy Tale Collection, where this story first appeared. Check our her website and follow her on Twitter. The story is narrated for you by slush wrangler Katherine Inskip. Katherine teaches astrophysics for a living and spends her spare time populating the universe with worlds of her own, which you can read at her blog, Trisigmatic. She’s on Twitter as well. Theme music is “Appeal to Heavens” by Alexye Nov, available at MusicAlley.com. Read along with the text of the story.

• Narrated by Paul Cram • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • Originally published in Writers of the Future (Volume 31) • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes Krystal Claxton writes speculative fiction in the sliver of time between being a parent and a full-time computer technician. She lives in Georgia with her long-suffering spouse, a dog who thinks she’s a cat, and a number of children that is subject to change. She enjoys breaking Heinlein’s Rules, getting distracted by DragonCon, and feverishly researching whichever random topic has just piqued her interest. You can keep up with her online at and on Twitter.       The very first story Paul Cram ever narrated was here at Cast of Wonders, and he seems to have been bit by the bug. While Paul still considers his voice to be somewhat new to the world of audio, he now has a few full-length novels under his belt, including the Zombie-filled love story Flirting With Death, sci-fi action story The Face Stealer and […]

• Narrated by Michelle Ristuccia • Audio production by Jeremy Carter • A Cast of Wonders original! • Discuss this story on our forum • For a list of all our stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia page • Come visit us on Facebook and Twitter Listen above or download here. Show Notes Nicole Feldringer holds a PhD in atmospheric sciences and a master in geophysics. In 2011, she attended the Viable Paradise Writer’s Workshop, and her fiction has previously appeared in the anthologies Press Start to Play and Loosed Upon the World both edited by John Joseph Adams. She currently lives in Los Angeles. Find her on Twitter. ‘Leapling’ is a Cast of Wonders original.       For your narrator this week we welcome back Michelle Ristuccia, who listeners may remember from a previous pair of really excellent stories. Michelle enjoys slowing down time in the middle of the night to read and review speculative fiction, because sleeping offspring are the best motivation. You can find out more about her writing and her rabid love of science fiction and fantasy at her website, stalk her on Twitter, or read her reviews at Tangent Online.       […]

Narrated by Ian Stuart Audio production by Jeremy Carter Originally published at Escapepod (December 2012) Listen above or download here. Show Notes Hello everyone, and welcome to our last episode of 2015. To round out the holidays and the year, we have one more steampunk winter tale for you. Make yourself a lovely beverage, curl up in front of the fire or under a cozy blanket, and enjoy the Dickensian prose of ‘Marley and Cratchit’ by David Steffen. David is a software engineer and writer living in Minnesota. He is the editor of Diabolical Plots, a zine on the topic of speculative fiction which publishes, among other things, original fiction as of this year and Best Of fiction podcast lists. Check out the 2014 list he created for us. David is the administrator of the Submission Grinder, a web tool for writers to track their submissions and find markets for their work. His fiction has been published in Escapepod, Daily Science Fiction, and previously here on Cast of Wonders, among others. David is also the editor of the Long List Anthology, a collection 21 stories collected from this year’s Hugo Awards lengthier nomination list. You don’t need to be familiar […]

Narrated by Kevin M. Hayes Audio production by Jeremy Carter Originally published in Intergalactic Medicine Show (November 2014) Listen above or download here. Show Notes We ran Rachael K. Jones‘ full bio last week when she narrated Hat Trick by Beth Cato. So this week, let us tell you about some of her own work. For example, we ran Rachael’s excellent Makeisha in Time as Episode 176. The story was originally published by the sadly soon-to-shutter Crossed Genres magazine, and then again on PodCastle narrated by the excellent K. Tempest Bradford. But did you know Makeisha in Time was also one of the Top 100 podcast episodes featured on NPR’s new earbud.fm? Or made the John Joseph Adams Notable list for 2015? This is Rachael’s second year of professional publication, so her final year of eligibility for the Campbell Award. Please consider her when you’re making your best-of posts this year. Wine for Witches, Milk for Saints is narrated by Kevin M. Hayes. Kevin has been reading science fiction since he was old enough to read, and has been writing it for almost as long. He is active in the Pittsburgh SFF organization, Parsec and helps put on Confluence, a […]

Narrated by Rachael K. Jones Audio production by Jeremy Carter Originally published in Oomph: A Little Super Goes A Long Way by Crossed Genres Publications Listen above or download here. Show Notes Beth Cato is the author of THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER steampunk fantasy series from Harper Voyager. Her short fiction is in Urban Fantasy Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Daily Science Fiction. Her story Reading Time appeared in Episode 141 last year. She’s a Hanford, California native transplanted to the Arizona desert, where she lives with her husband, son, and requisite cat. You can follow her online and on Twitter.       The story is narrated for you by Podcastle co-editor Rachael K. Jones. Rachael grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, an addiction to running, and a couple degrees. Now she writes speculative fiction in Athens, Georgia, where she lives with her husband. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of venues, including Shimmer, Lightspeed, Accessing the Future, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Crossed Genres, and Daily Science Fiction. She is an editor, a SFWA member, and a secret android. Follow her on Twitter.   Theme […]