Quick Sips - PodCastle #616 & 620

It's a fairly full month of stories at PodCastle, with a special double release pushing the total stories to three. They aren't exactly the cheeriest of tales, dealing with grief, transformation, loneliness, and death. But the stories hold some tenderness and hope in their hearts, managing to navigate through or around the crush of emotions, the gravity of loss, and steer toward a place where maybe healing can begin. Where maybe the characters can shift the narrative away from tragedy and to a more affirming place. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Diabolical Plots #51

Art by Joey Jordan

Loss infuses the two original stories from Diabolical Plots this month, with narratives centering sacrifice and violence, history and resilience. They are two very different pieces, one growing out of a willing compact between a town and the sea, the other looking at a different and less consensual sort of link between a place and people. Both in some ways are about cities, though, and the darkness and the hurt and the loss that lives in the heart of of them, that flows through their histories like water. And they look at the weight of tragedy and a couple of moments where people are able to push back and survive. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online December 2015

This month's Flash Fiction Online is all about the holidays. Well, mostly all about the holidays. Three stories anchor the issue, two of them rather explicitly holiday themed and all of them offering a mix of darkness and hope. In each there are hard truths that are cut by slivers of hope. Elves are exploited and risk death to escape their master, the world stands on the brink of a new mass extinction, and two girls are trapped in a Christmas that never ends. But through all that there is some light, the light breaking through the glass, the light of human kindness and human invention. That all is not lost. That this winter might not be our last. A fine issue that I'm going to get to reviewing!

Art by Dario Bijelac

Quick Sips - Urban Fantasy #12

This month's Urban Fantasy Magazine might not bring stories that deal directly with the spookiest of months, but does get into the ghouliday spirit with a story about ghost fish and a story about a fortune teller that does get plenty dark. Both stories involve women, young or old, dealing with circumstances getting a bit beyond their comfort zone and having to try and handle themselves. Both do, and rather stunningly so, though not perhaps without some harm being done. But both stories have a strong core of healing, if not always in the way that was most expected. To the reviews!