Toasted Cake 75! In which we litigate.
K.G. Jewell lives and writes in Austin, Texas. He has never lost a cage match. His website, which is rarely updated, is lit.kgjewell.com
Marlene Hazelwitch and Doreen Sneed were married on February 14, 2007.
Marlene Hazelwitch's kitten, Snuggles, was, with assistance, the ring
bearer in the ceremony.
Cross promotion! This story is simultaneously appearing over at The Mad Scientist Journal, a/o 2013 June 17.
Toasted Cake 74! In which we try to drag Ma into the 21st century (plus a bit.)
I stood in front of Ma's door and shifted the packages to get at my key. Before I could reach the lock, she opened the door.
(First appeared right here in Daily SF.)
Lee Hallison is a transplanted New Yorker who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and her teenaged daughter. She has been published in Daily Science Fiction, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Drabblecast and Beam Me Up. You can read more about her at leehallison.com
Toasted Cake 73! In which school gets out.
The bell rang, and the countdown was on.
Nathaniel Lee puts words in various orders. Periodically people give
him money for this. The correlation is weak at best, but present. He
lives somewhat unwillingly in North Carolina with his wife, son, and
obligatory cats, where he maintains a vague sort of career that
provides sufficient money to continue his writing and board game
habits. Coincidentally, he is the Assistant Editor of both Escape Pod
and the Drabblecast (the posts were each offered independently and
without knowledge of the other). As a result, he has read enough
stories about penises, serial killers, and time travel. He is also an assistant editor for the humorous anthology series Unidentified Funny Objects. Check out his blog at Mirrorshards where he does Very Short Stories. 100 words. No more. No fewer. Every day.
Sorry, all - came back from the Nebulas and promptly came down with a cold and laryngitis. :( See you next week . . . .
Toasted Cake 72! In which the flutes of birthdays break.
The entryway tiles were covered in a puddle of spilled memories--a week in the hospital, his grandfather's last ragged breaths, the funeral service in the pouring rain.
First appeared right here in Daily SF.
Caroline M. Yoachim is a writer and photographer living in Seattle, Washington. She had six new stories come out in 2012, including appearances in Lightspeed, Interzone, and Daily Science Fiction. For more about Caroline, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.
Toasted Cake 71! In which we use our social media.
Beth pointed at the browser window. "I don't know how he got there."
First appeared right here in Every Day Fiction.
Sylvia Spruck Wrigley is an aviation and fantasy writer. Born in Heidelberg, she spent her childhood in California and now splits her time between southeast Wales and Andalucia, two coastal regions with almost nothing in common. Her new non-fiction book, Why Planes Crash: 2001, is just now out. The series explores 21st century aviation disasters and brings the investigations to life. Find out more about it at fearoflanding.com.
Or, find out more about Sylvia at intrigue.co.uk.
(Sorry about the nearly-empty file uploaded the first time, guys! All fixed now.)
Toasted Cake 70! In which we have a story for Mother's Day.
She had my teeth. I hadn't expected to recognize myself in her, but when she greeted me, her maroon lips parting into a crescent, there they were.
(First appeared right here in Daily SF.)
Krystal Claxton writes speculative fiction in the sliver of time between raising a three-year old with her amazing husband and being a full-time computer technician. She enjoys attending Dragon*Con in costume, science magazines, and feverishly researching whichever random topic has just piqued her interest. Keep up with her at krystalclaxton.wordpress.com or @krystalclaxton on Twitter.
Toasted Cake 69! In which we try to blow out the candles.
The therapist's waiting room was plain--white sterile walls and carpet
floors that smelled of chemicals.
Dr. Kenneth Kao is a graduate of Odyssey Writing Workshop and Orson Scott Card's Literary Boot Camp. His fiction has sold to OSC's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily
Science Fiction, Buzzy Magazine, Drabblecast, and others. He is the chiropractor and owner of Vital Balance Chiropractic. He is also a Parkour/Freerunning/Kung Fu instructor,
and besides being a writer, he is an avid pole dancer. Find him at pkchiro.wordpress.com.
Toasted Cake 68! In which we have a great personality.
I put out the ad so long ago I thought that no one was going to respond, I mean some people did respond but they were all really weird and kind of crazy, and then you responded, and at first I thought it was a joke, but now you're here!
Alexandra Grunberg is a student at New York University in the Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has been published in Daily Science Fiction, Mustang's Monster Corral, and Garbled Transmissions. She loves Stephen King, Game of Thrones, and Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Toasted Cake 67! In which we catch the foxes.
They've sunk a shaft deep in the dirt of the meadow and chained her there.
(First appeared in Grendelsong.)
Samantha Henderson's short fiction and poetry have been published in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit and Weird Tales, the anthologies Running with the Pack and Fantasy, and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Science Fiction, Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, and the upcoming Mammoth Book of Steampunk. She is the author of the Forgotten Realms novel Dawnbringer, and the poetry collection, The House of Forever. Her website is at www.samanthahenderson.com.
Toasted Cake 66! In which we adjust a slightly askew shade of green . . . and keep going.
One day Adrian decided to rebuild the world.
First appeared in Nine.
Alex Shvartsman is a writer and game designer whose short stories appeared or are forthcoming at Nature, Daily Science Fiction, Buzzy Magazine, One Buck Horror and many other 'zines and anthologies. His adventures so far have included traveling to over 30 countries, playing a card game for a living, and building a successful business. Alex resides in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and son. His recently published fiction is linked at www.alexshvartsman.com, and his recently published anthology of humorous F/SF, Unidentified Funny Objects, is at ufopub.com. And check out Alex's kickstarter for his second volume of UFO!
Toasted Cake 65! In which we have always moved to the left.
"I feel good, actually. Quite normal. I'm not aware of any odd cravings or a stray compulsion to go out and tickle the bellies of Basset hounds."
Canfield's phobias run to politicians, lawyers and oil company executives. Some of his current work includes stories in Atomic Avarice and Mad Scientist Journal. He likes dogs and beer.
Toasted Cake 64! In which we fly.
My body remembers what I can't.
(First appeared right here in Daily SF.)
Anatoly Belilovsky was born in a city that changed six or seven owners in the last 100 years, learned English from Star Trek reruns, and is now a pediatrician in an area of Brooklyn, New York, where English is the fourth most commonly spoken language. He is a SFWA member with stories in Nature, Ideomancer, Kasma, Stupefying Stories, and Andromeda Spaceways, among other publications. Unlike most other writers, he is not owned by any cats.
Toasted Cake 63! In which we ponder the fate of Mayoress Deely.
Please come in, sir, madam. Finest jewel store in the district, madam, certainly.
(First appeared in Fear and Trembling)
Nicki Vardon: Hard-core scientist, soft-hearted metalhead, seasoned night owl and part-time catsitter. Dutch by birth, British by tea addiction. Nicki can be woken up in the middle of the night for - or by - metal concerts and Twining's Lady Grey, but always at one's own risk. Her work has appeared in Niteblade, The Red Penny Papers and Fear & Trembling.
Toasted Cake 62! In which our shells grow thick.
The shining ones came and took us from the boiling acid pools.
(First appeared in Redstone SF.)
Steve grew up listening to his dad's ghost stories and never recovered. He attended Orson Scott Card's Literary Boot Camp in 2009 and currently lives in Oklahoma in a small house full of girls. His stories have appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show, Redstone, Daily Science Fiction, and others. His nonfiction blog posts have been featured by SFWA.
Toasted Cake 61! In which we try to placate the Troll Council.
The plumber's deep voice resounded from beneath the maintenance hatch by the main pool at Cascade Reef waterpark. "You've only got one troll left."
(First appeared right here in Daily SF)
David works for an engineering design firm in Minnesota. His fiction has appeared in many magazines: Escape Pod, AE, Bull Spec, Pseudopod, Drabblecast, and many others. He edits the ezine Diabolical Plots which posts nonfiction articles related to the field of speculative fiction, including The Best of Toasted Cake. You can visit Diabolical Plots for his full bibliography. He is
also the co-creator of The Submissions Grinder, an always-free writer's tool that provides a submission tracker and fiction market listings with response time statistics.
Toasted Cake 60! In which we drop nails.
The nahual smiles, showing off its yellowed teeth, as it stands under the streetlamp.
First appeared in Bull Spec. (In the current issue!)
Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's work appears in Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing, The Book of Cthulhu and other places. She has edited or co-edited several anthologies, including Future Lovecraft, and the recent anthology Fungi, with stories by Jeff VanderMeer, Laird Barron, Lavie Tidhar and many others, which can be purchased at fungiantho.com. She operates Innsmouth Free Press and blogs at silviamoreno-garcia.com.
Toasted Cake 59! In which we skitter from singularity to singularity.
The time of Kali has passed.
(First appeared in Poe Little Thing's 'In Space No One Can Hear You Scream' anthology, and can be read online at After Ever After.)
Deborah Walker grew up in the most English town in the country, but she soon high-tailed it down to London, where she now lives with her partner, Chris, and her two young children. Her stories have appeared in Nature's Futures, Cosmos and Daily Science Fiction. You can frequently find her in the British Museum, or on her blog at deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.com
TC59-the-unmoveable-sky.mp3
Toasted Cake 58! In which we wind up a bird with hammered-copper wings.
When Rivka was eight years old, she built her first automaton.
(First appeared in Steam-Powered: Steampunk Lesbian Stories, ed. JoSelle Vanderhooft)
Shira Lipkin has managed to convince Apex Magazine, Stone Telling, Chizine, Interfictions 2, Mythic Delirium, and other otherwise-sensible magazines and anthologies to publish her work; two of her stories have been recognized as Million Writers Award Notable Stories, and she has won the Rhysling Award for best short poem. She credits luck, glitter eyeliner, and tenacity. She lives in Boston with her family and the requisite cats, most of whom also write. She also fights crime with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, does six impossible things before breakfast, and would like a nap now.
Toasted Cake 57! In which we imbibe.
Susan's hair had always smelled of coconut and jasmine. He still had a half-full bottle of her shampoo in the shower, waiting.
(First appeared right here on Daily SF.)
D. Thomas Minton's fiction has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Daily Science Fiction. While he currently resides with his wife and daughter on a little speck of land in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, big changes are afoot. This is his second story to appear on Toasted Cake, leaving him to wonder how he managed to get his cake and eat it, too. His idle ramblings hold court at dthomasminton.com and would appreciate your visit.
Toasted Cake 56! In which we are as brilliant as a biolume tattoo.
You can hold the city in your mind for a month if you are lucky, and skilled.
(First appeared in Bull Spec.)
Erin Hoffman is the author of the Chaos Knight trilogy from Pyr Books, whose concluding volume, Shield of Sea and Space is forthcoming in 2013. Her work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Bull Spec, Electric Velocipede, and elsewhere. You can read more at erinhoffman.com or follow her on twitter at @gryphoness.
Toasted Cake 55! In which we are all too human.
"It's so very green," said Iolanthe. "Why can't we have colors like this on the ship?"
(First appeared in Stupefying Stories.)
Alex Shvartsman is a writer and game designer whose short stories appeared or are forthcoming at Nature, Daily Science Fiction, Buzzy Magazine, One Buck Horror and many other 'zines and anthologies. His adventures so far have included traveling to over 30 countries, playing a card game for a living, and building a successful business. Alex resides in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and son. His recently published fiction is linked at www.alexshvartsman.com, and his recently published anthology of humorous F/SF, Unidentified Funny Objects, is at ufopub.com.
Sorry everyone, but I'm afraid there's not going to be a voice this week. I expect and hope to sound decent by Sunday to record next week's episode, so we'll just skip to that. :P
Meanwhile, are you listening to Graeme Dunlop's Cast of Wonders? I recorded The Cruel Sister by James Breyfogle for them a few months ago.
Stay well! See you on the flip side.
Sorry, guys, I caught a bug on Friday and I sound like a baritone frog with vocal fry. I like to be a week ahead to avoid this, but I haven't caught up since being gone over the holidays.
Hope to record the next ep tomorrow or the next day--fingers crossed!
Toasted Cake 54! In which the Moon loves the Earth too much.
(AND! In which we kick off the 2013 year of Toasted Cake!)
"When I was little," Dad says, softly chuckling, "the Moon was so small I thought I could put it in my pocket, like a coin."
(First published right here at the ever-awesome Daily SF, Nov 1st, 2012)
Ken Liu is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. His fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. He has won a Nebula, a Hugo, a World Fantasy Award, and a Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award, and been nominated for the Sturgeon and the Locus Awards. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.
[ETA: The correct title of this is "Mother Ship"]
My mother was a colony ship.
(First appeared right here in Lightspeed.)
Caroline M. Yoachim is a writer and photographer living in Seattle,
Washington. She had six new stories come out in 2012, including
appearances in Lightspeed, Interzone, and Daily Science Fiction. For
more about Caroline, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.
Toasted Cake 52! In which we try to be a good elf.
(First appeared right here in Thaumatrope)
Samuel Montgomery-Blinn is the publisher of Bull Spec, a quarterly magazine of speculative fiction. His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction and in the blog of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; his fiction has appeared in Thaumatrope, PicFic, and 52 Stitches: Volume 2. He lives in Durham where he works as a software engineer, raises 2 wonderful kids with his amazing wife, and defends his guitars from 3 rampaging cats. He loves audiobooks, so if you have recently listened to one you really love, drop him a line at sam at bullspec dot com, find him on Facebook, or on Twitter as @montsamu.
TC52-bad-elf.mp3
Toasted Cake 51! In which we drop the ice cream.
Approximately 21,973,000 people will die this year.
(First appeared in Abyss & Apex)
Caren Gussoff is a SF writer living in Seattle, WA. The author of Homecoming, a novel (2000), and The Wave and Other Stories (2003), published by Serpent's Tail/High Risk Books, Gussoff's work has also been published in anthologies by Seal Press and Hadley Rille, as well as in Abyss & Apex, Cabinet des Fées, Fantasy Magazine, and M-BRANE. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998, and in 2008, was the Carl Brandon Society's Octavia E. Butler Scholar to Clarion West. She's currently shopping around a novel set in post-pandemic Puget Sound. She is spitkitten everywhere online, especially at spitkitten.com.
Toasted Cake 50! In which we gamble.
I won my almost-husband in a game of poker.
(First appeared in Every Day Fiction.)
L. Lambert Lawson's work has appeared in Every Day Fiction, Cast of Wonders, Liquid Imagination Online, Travelers' Tales, Perigee-Art, Nanoism, and 7x20 and is forthcoming in Roar and Thunder. His non-fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Toasted Cake 49! In which we play with our cars.
It was summer, a hot humid North Carolina summer, and there was nothing else to do.
(First appeared in Marti and Bridget McKenna's magazine "Aeon Speculative Fiction.")
Also! Check out his new website at daviddlevine.com, and watch for the ebook of his short story collection Space Magic, coming very soon!
TC49-moonlight-on-the-carpet.mp3
Toasted Cake 48! In which we sample the gruyere.
It was three o'clock in the morning and Steve stood in an alley, awaiting the underground cheese tasting.
Eric Stoveken is a writer based in Allentown, PA. He is the author of the short story collection The Devil Yearns for the Perfect Denver Omelet and Other Revelations. His work can be found at various places. Also check out the kickstarter for the revival of Loquacious Broadsheet, a literary broadsheet meant to put fiction in new and exciting places.
Toasted Cake 47! In which we have a good deal of patients.
The supernatural set could be so sensitive.
J. M. Vogel lives in a suburb of Columbus, OH. She is setting out to show the world that a degree in English does not predestine you to life in the unemployment line.
Toasted Cake 46! In which the sky is grey flannel, and sometimes green.
The mannequin felt her skin itch whenever the sirens went off.
(First appeared right here in Pedestal.)
Kenneth Schneyer fades in and out of this reality according to the cycles of certain variable stars. His stories may be found in Analog, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clockwork Phoenix 3, GUD, Abyss & Apex, Bull Spec, Ideomancer, The Drabblecast, and anonymous notes left in strangers' mailboxes. By day, he teaches legal studies and science fiction literature to college undergraduates. Born in Detroit, he now lives in Rhode Island with one singer, one dancer, one actor, and something striped and fanged that he sometimes glimpses out of the corner of his eye. You can bother him on Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal.
Sorry for the lateness! Been traveling home from Toronto World Fantasy all day! Here you are:
Toasted Cake 45! In which we wait at 3:30.
What is closure? How do you close a door if the house has burned to ashes?
First appeared right here in Pedestal.
Beth Cato resides in Arizona. Her stories can be found such places as Daily Science Fiction and Flash Fiction Online. For information on her latest projects, please visit bethcato.com.
Hey all! All September subs are complete and done, except for one person who's been notified. If you have not heard from me, please query immediately (and um, I'll answer you when I get back from World Fantasy! :)
BTW, if you didn't know, there is a Toasted Cake group on facebook. I post the weekly eps and occasional updates, and you can comment on any ep at any time there.
Oh hey, while I'm here - I'm not sure if I'll have connection in Toronto - if I don't, Monday's ep will go up a little late. See you then!
Toasted Cake 44! In which we resuscitate.
Try CPR for an hour or so, out here in the hall, where they can see.
(First appeared in Postcards from Hell, available to read here)
Toasted Cake 43! In which we change planes.
I have about an hour before the shareholders' meeting, but I have to stop by the day care first, so I want to make this snappy.
Available to read here.
Darusha is the two-time Parsec Award shortlisted author of the SF novels Beautiful Red, Self Made, Act of Will and The Beauty of Our Weapons. She is a Canadian currently living in New Zealand after having sailed from Victoria, BC down the coast of the Americas and across the South Pacific on her sailboat, Scream.
Toasted Cake 42! In which we wake up.
"It's like the city just shrugged," somebody whispered.
(First appeared in Apex.)
Anaea Lay lives in Madison, Wisconsin where she sells Real Estate under a different name, writes, cooks, plays board games, spoils her cat, and plots to take over the world. The rumors that she never sleeps are not true. She has no comment on the rumors about the disconcerting noises emanating from her basement. Her blog is at anaealay.com.
Episode 41! In which we tell a fairy tale.
Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom there lived a hard-working tailor named Albert.
(First appeared in Lone Star Stories.)
Samantha Henderson's short fiction and poetry have been published in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit and Weird Tales, the anthologies Running with the Pack and Fantasy, and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Science Fiction, Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, and the upcoming Mammoth Book of Steampunk. She is the author of the Forgotten Realms novel Dawnbringer, and her first collection of poetry, The House of Forever, is coming out from Raven Electrick Ink this month. Her website is at www.samanthahenderson.com.
TC41-tailor-and-fairy.mp3
Thanks for all your submissions, everyone! I have responded to all subs, with yay, nay, or hold pile, so if you haven't heard from me please query immediately. (I did find 2 subs in my spam folder.)
I will be going through the hold pile over the next couple weeks (but do bear with me, as I've got a lot of travel this month.) ALSO, I have to figure out if there is a TC2013, and if so, what. Big decisions ahead....
Episode #40! In which we bounce around.
(First appeared as a bonus podcast for Escape Artists forum members)
Tina Connolly lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and young son, in a house that came with a dragon in the basement and blackberry vines in the attic. Her stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the anthology Unplugged: Web's Best SF 2008. Her debut fantasy novel Ironskin is now out from Tor, with a sequel forthcoming in Fall 2013. She reads stories for Podcastle and Escape Pod, among others, and runs the Parsec-winning flash fiction podcast Toasted Cake (Look how self-referential we are!) In the summer she works as a face painter, which means a glitter-filled house is an occupational hazard. Her website is tinaconnolly.com.
Toasted Cake 39! In which we eat.
Matthias Fenstermacher loved onions, but hated slicing them, and so he labored to produce a tearless variety.
And,
That first day, my salad plate was garnished with leaves of lemon balm, tiny citrus-scented flowers, signifying that one is looking for love.
Ann Leckie's "The Sad History of the Tearless Onion" first appeared on Podcastle, and Cat Rambo's "Appetite for Love" first appeared in Sybil's Garage.
Cat Rambo writes, edits, and teaches, all from the shore of eagle-haunted Lake Sammammish, where she co-exists with two cats, a software developer, and a large number of plastic dinosaurs. See her website at kittywumpus.net for links to more of her fiction.
TC39-onion-appetite.mp3
Toasted Cake 38! In which we archaeologe while riding around on a badger.
It was from the plastic, not from the frame of the building we uncovered later, that we knew this was a site of the Right-Angle Culture.
First appeared right here in Nature.
After a short foray into the great wide world--he has lived in Central
Europe and in Turkey--T. F. Davenport has returned to the womb of
university. He roams at large in the University of California system,
studying linguistics and cognitive science. You can find his work at
Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Nature Futures, and other magazines.
Toasted Cake 37! In which we arm ourselves with sporks.
Course Description: The world will end, is ending, has ended. Nuclear winter, Yellowstone's supervolcano, robot zombies or zombie robots--what do you do now?
First appeared right here in Booth.
Alexander Lumans graduated from the M.F.A. Fiction Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His fiction has been published in or is forthcoming from Clarkesworld, Brain Harvest, Story Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Blackbird, The Normal School, American Short Fiction, Surreal South '11, and The Book of Villains. He was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the 2010 Sewanee Writers' Conference and he won the 2011 Barry Hannah Fiction Prize from The Yalobusha Review. Recently, he was awarded a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Blue Mountain Center Fellowship, and a scholarship to attend the ART342 Artist Residency. He now lives and teaches in Denver, CO.
TC37-you-and-your-apocalypse.mp3
Toasted Cake 36! In which we hear about books we cannot read.
For the entirety of its 475 pages, Why I Want to Love consists of one uninterrupted string of words.
Excerpted from the story "Vermilion Dreams: The Complete Works of Bram Jameson", first published in Tesseracts 14: Strange Canadian Stories (Edge 2010), edited by John Robert Colombo & Brett Alexander Savory.
Claude Lalumière is the author of the collection OBJECTS OF WORSHIP (2009) and the mosaic novella THE DOOR TO LOST PAGES (2011), both from CZP. He has edited nine anthologies in various genres, with a tenth -- BIBLIOTHECA FANTASTICA (Dagan Books) -- due out in autumn 2012. He's the Fantastic Fiction columnist for The Montreal Gazette and, with Rupert Bottenberg, is the co-creator of Lost Myths, which is a live show, a collection of pop artefacts, and an online archive of cryptomythology hosted at lostmyths.net. For more about Claude, visit lostmyths.net/claude
Breaking News! Toasted Cake WINS the Parsec for Best New Podcaster!
I am so thrilled - thanks to all of you for listening, and for your feedback and support. Toasted Cake was also a finalist for Best SF Magazine - big congrats to Drabblecast for winning that one, and to all the other nominees in both of these categories. So many thanks also to the judges, admin, and everyone involved with the Parsec awards!
I sent excerpts from 4 episodes, btw - they had to be from the first four months of the year, and I chose Caroline M. Yoachim's Pageant Girls, Cat Rambo's The Coffeemaker's Passion, Helena Bell's Please Return My Son Who is in Your Custody, and Steven R. Stewart's Mark and Shelly's.
The other news is that Toasted Cake is open for submissions for the month of September. Please, send in your odd little flash stories. I need ten more to round out the year.
PS: Several of you have asked if there will be a Toasted Cake 2013. My best guess currently is that there will be something, but it will be different. Stay tuned....
PS: Several of you have asked if there will be a Toasted Cake 2013. My best guess currently is that there will be something, but it will be different. Stay tuned....
Toasted Cake 35! In which things become kittens.
The kitten, wedged in the glove compartment, gave a discontented mew when we pulled her out.
E. Catherine Tobler's recent sales include Beneath Ceaseless Skies and the Mammoth Book of Steampunk. She is an active member of SFWA and the senior editor at Shimmer. Find her at ecatherine.com.
Toasted Cake 34! In which we fit in a LOT of clowns.
Forty-two clowns in all; one car much too small.
First published right here in 10 Flash Magazine.
D. Thomas Minton's fiction has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Daily Science Fiction. He resides with his wife and daughter on a little speck of land in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. His idle ramblings hold court at dthomasminton.com and would appreciate your visit.
TC34-clownspace.mp3
Toasted Cake 33! In which we remember our future.
"I remember dying," my husband tells me.
Caroline is a writer and photographer living in Seattle, Washington.
She's a graduate of the Clarion West Writer's Workshop, and her
fiction has appeared in Asimov's, Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed, and Daily Science
Fiction, among other places. Her novelette "Stone Wall Truth" was
nominated for a nebula award last year and has since been reprinted in
Chinese and Czech. For more about Caroline, take a look at her
website at carolineyoachim.com
TC33-deathbed.mp3
This story first appeared in Daily SF.
Toasted Cake 32! In which we examine our toes.
For the first time, Emily realized that her hair was the color of honey and her eyes were the color of wedding soup.
This story first appeared in Superficial Flesh.
Romie Stott is an author and narrative filmmaker whose work has been published in Strange Horizons, Reflection's Edge, She Nailed A Stake Through His Head, and shown at the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Gallery in London, and at festivals around the world. Her under-construction portfolio is at romiesays.tumblr.com.
TC32-the-hungry-child.mp3
Toasted Cake 31! In which we storm the castle.
(AND! In which we are finalists in TWO Parsec categories: Best New Podcast & Best Magazine Podcast! Squee!)
Deep
in the bowels of the Toys-R-We in a space which smells of plastic and
stale air conditioning, the Barbie aisle's occupants are plotting,
fomenting conquest.
This story first appeared in Expanded Horizons.
Cat Rambo writes, edits, and teaches, all from the shore of eagle-haunted Lake Sammammish, where she co-exists with two cats, a software developer, and a large number of plastic dinosaurs. See her website at kittywumpus.net for links to more of her fiction.
TC31-coyote-barbie.mp3
Toasted Cake 30! In which we conflagrate.
In 1863, a nanophage spontaneously appeared in Louis Pasteur's yogurt.
Alkahest first appeared in Brain Harvest, as "Phases of Alkahest".
Wlliam T. Vandemark can be found wandering the back roads of America in a pickup. He chases storms, photographs weather vanes, and prospects for fulgurites. His hand lettered fiction has appeared on sidewalks, on bridge abutments, and on the backside of billboards. Published work has appeared in Apex Magazine, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Word Riot, and assorted anthologies as detailed on his website: www.williamtvandemark.com. Currently he serves as a multimedia producer and web editor for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America.
Toasted Cake 29! In which we talk to knives.
We were covered in mud and never came clean. That's what we shared, all of us 'Niners.
First appeared in Phantom.
Vylar Kaftan has published about three dozen stories in places such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Realms of Fantasy. Her 2010 Lightspeed story, "I'm Alive, I Love You, I'll See You in Reno," was nominated for a Nebula. She founded FOGcon, a new literary sf/f convention in the San Francisco Bay Area, and she blogs at vylarkaftan.net
Toasted Cake 28! In which we consider retirement.
Welcome, welcome! I hope the Hylonomus eggs at breakfast were satisfactory?
This story first appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.
Ken Liu is a writer and translator of speculative fiction. His stories have appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, Clarkesworld, and Lightspeed, among other places. He lives and works near Boston.
Toasted Cake 27! In which we decide things.
Sheila considered it an unexpected stroke of good luck. She had little reason, after all, to think that anyone would ever take an interest in her heart again.
First published in Brain Harvest.
Nicole M. Taylor is a writer, Excel master and tiny gargoyle wrangler living in LA. She likes highlighting things unnecessarily and Fig Newtons. She bloggerates here: nicolemtaylor.com
Toasted Cake 26! In which we have blindingly white legs and bad Humphrey Bogart impressions.
When Dr. Evyl set his nuclear bomb to explode in the top of the Eiffel Tower, Cindy had grabbed it and tossed it, all 5,000 pounds of steel casings and uranium, into the sky, where Fred caught it and carried it into space, beyond the moon's orbit.
Jude-Marie Green has sold short stories to twitter, online magazines, and various anthologies. She has edited with Abyss&Apex, Noctem Aeternus, and 10Flash. She attended Clarion West in 2010 and has the tattoo to prove it. She likes oranges, chicken, and being warm.
Toasted Cake 25! In which we upclock.
The Unitard processor used in domestic apparata is also used in such diverse devices as spacecraft, surgical robots, and attack drones, and because of high-volume manufacture is quite reasonable in price.
First appeared in slightly longer form in Kasma.
Anatoly Belilovsky was born in a city that changed six or seven owners in the last 100 years, learned English from Star Trek reruns, and is now a pediatrician in an area of Brooklyn, New York, where English is the fourth most commonly spoken language. He is a SFWA member with stories in Nature, Ideomancer, Kasma, Stupefying Stories, and Andromeda Spaceways, among other publications. Unlike most other writers, he is not owned by any cats.
Toasted Cake 24: In which we fire the coals and RAKE THEM TOO.
They don't build us with windshield wipers over our glass eyes.
A Toasted Cake Original, and a Giant.
C.S.E. Cooney collects knives and books. Her fiction and poetry can be found in Rich Horton's Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2011 and 2012, SteamPowered II and Clockwork Phoenix 3, at Apex, Subterranean, Strange Horizons, Podcastle, Goblin Fruit, Cabinet des Fées and Mythic Delirium. She was this year's recipient of the Rhysling Award in the Long Poem category. Her novella Jack o' the Hills is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Her poetry collection, How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes, just came out from Papaveria Press. She thinks we should all sing Zing-Zou-Zou.
Toasted Cake 23! In which we tell you three very short stories.
Alberto Yáñez - Driving for Peanuts
Eli Effinger-Weintraub - Spirit of Leadership
Wendy N. Wagner - Stone Queen, a poem that first ran in Abyss & Apex
Alberto Yáñez is a writer and photographer. A native Californian, he now lives in Portland, OR, and tells himself that he really likes the rain. Among other things, he's a graduate of Clarion West 2011 and Viable Paradise XII. His middle name is Maximiliano, and you can find him on Twitter at @freelance_max. You can send him email at amaxyanez at gmail dot com and visit his website at albertoyanez.com.
Eli Effinger-Weintraub writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and stageplays. Her work has been anthologized in the recent anthology from the Minnesota Spec Fic Writers, Sky-Tinted Waters, as well as We Don't Need Another Wave, and Best Date Ever, published in Steampunk Tales and Witches & Pagans Magazine, and performed at Patrick's Cabaret and the Minnesota
Fringe Festival. Her semimonthly column Restorying the Sacred for No Unsacred Place explores the possibilities of science-based myth-making. Eli lives, arts, and cycles in the Twin Cities watershed with her wife, artist Leora Effinger-Weintraub, and two buffalo disguised as cats. Follow her doings at backbooth.thesane.net or on Twitter as @AwflyWeeEli.
Wendy N. Wagner's short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in over a dozen publications, including Beneath Ceaseless Skies magazine and the anthologies The Way of the Wizard and Armored. Her first novel, Dark Depths, is due Summer 2012 from Dagan Press. Ms. Wagner lives in Portland, Oregon, with her very understanding family--and most unfortunately, no dinosaurs. You can keep up with her at winniewoohoo.com.
Toasted Cake 22! In which things are so very bright.
There was something wrong with the light. There was too much of it.
First published in SPARKS.
Nathaniel Lee is a writer living in North Carolina with his wife, child, and obligatory cats. He puts words in order, and sometimes people give him money for them. His work, including a full bibliography, can be found at his daily writing blog, Mirrorshards, where he publishes a 100-word story every day.
Toasted Cake is an idiosyncratic flash fiction podcast from Tina Connolly. Subscribe to rss or iTunes at Feedburner.
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Toasted Cake 9: Incantation by Jessica Reisman