HUB 114

HUB ISSUE 114

Fiction

The Unpopular Opinion of Reverend Tobias Thackery by Adam Christopher

Reviews and Features
Feature
Interview - Joe R. Lansdale (part 1)

Reviews
The Age of Zeus by James Lovegrove
Tomes of the Dead: Tide of Souls by Simon Bestwick

http://www.hubfiction.com/

NITEBLADE: UPDATE

March 2010 Issue

Cats in the Backyard by J. David Bell
And the cats, undeterred, continued to creep down the hill. It swam as if with maggots. In the fall he burned them in piles of leaves, in the winter he pried their bodies from the cement with a shovel, in the spring he dredged them from puddles of rainwater, oil and fur slowly swirling.
Finally Never Again by Crystal Lynn Hilbert
He smelled fear far off in the distance, faint as feathers rasping on the back pockets of his tongue. In a second he was off, moving through alleyways stained purple with twilight, burrowing like a needle stitching and unstitching the dried up, labyrinthine veins of the city.
Judas Dances by Paul Walther
Quentin would think of this every night as he rolled over on the filthy mattress that served as his bed and watched the skeleton dance.
Happy Halloween, It’s a Bloody Puppet Show by Bill Ratner
Like Torquemada at the Spanish Inquistion, he enlisted those least appropriate to help in his insufferable enterprise — the ones whom he knew would experience the most discomfort at his hands: incorrigible delinquents, boys with severe stutters, athletes, and the chronically shy.
AutoCanniBioTech by Joseph A. W. Quintela
It’ll be just a few months after the surgery. It happens every time. You’ll show up at my office again with a strange look on you face. I’ll play dumb even though I know exactly why you’ve come.
The Devil at Your Heels by Robert Mammone
The rumbling rose sharply into a banshee wail, a shrieking that was matched by Arthur’s own. In his side mirror, the yellow car surged forward.
The Night The Cricket-Man Came by Alejandro Omidsalar
He thundered across it with a victorious yell, and true to the tale, I stopped Daredevil, who reared up and nearly threw me of. Crane spun his horse about and shook his fist, shouting oaths and challenges, his lanky body nearly sliding off the horse.
Sickeningly Sweet by Maia Lena
All her life she had been surrounded by sugar. It was all she ate, for her father would not share with her the raw meat that constituted his own diet.
Bride of Neanderthal by Jonathan Sweet
Visions of my death played themselves in my head like black & white newsreel footage. I tried to clear my thoughts and meditate, as Beatrice and Gordon had taught me. But I could manage no deep breaths, bound and rocked by despair as I was.

http://www.niteblade.com/march-2010/

MIRROR DANCE: UPDATE

The Spring 2010 Issue of Mirror Dance!

• Fiction by

Nick Poniatowski,

Michele Stepto,

Sylvia Hiven,

Meghann McVey,

Stuart Sharp

R. W. Nichols

• Poetry by

Changming Yuan,

Shelley Bryant,

Robert Shmigelsky,

Holly Day

http://mirrordancefantasy.blogspot.com/

SORCEROUS SIGNALS: UPDATE

By An Old Oak Tree - Derek Ivan Webster

Trapped in an oak tree, a wizard reflects on love lost and yet to be redeemed.

Condemn - James Jason Dye Poetry

Demons of the Dark Sun - Mitch Allen

Coyotl the Chichimec must fight along side his enemies, the Aztecs, to prevent the Demons of the Dark Sun from destroying the world.

Fairy Kingdom - Eric J. Juneau Flash Fiction

Figuring Sums - Robert Collins

Trent the Tinkerer creates a magical calculating machine.

Flour Power - Rebecca S.W. Bates

Felicity is a wizard and a cook - whose special purpose is to follow the flour and help to prevent a disaster that will kill hundreds in the 'real' world.

Magic, Sword and ... Turnips - Olga Godim

When a sword fails and magic is not enough, two young sisters, a warrior and a magician apprentice, improvise to save their city.

The Little Guy - Dale Phillips

That story you probably heard about me is nothing but bull. The little guy always gets the shaft, and that's what happened. Let me tell you about it...

The Pipes are Calling - Robert E. Keller

Desperate to find the magic left behind by the Iron Smiths, a young man learns the truth in his reflection.

The Spirit Shaman- Yeoryious Pantazis

A mercenary who rejected his people's traditions, earning him the title of oathbreaker, is about to find out how inescapable those traditions truly are.

http://www.sorceroussignals.com/

RESIDENTIAL ALIENS 4:3

Speculative Fiction from the Seven Stars

SHARP STICK
by Walter G. Esselman
The young dragon, Pavataro, heard the crackling fire. Smoke rolled across the ceiling of the cave, illuminated by the glowrocks embedded in it, casting shafts of color throughout the grey. The dragon walked around the corner. Before a small fire was a young boy with dark unkempt hair and bright orange eyes. The boy, Gideon, stuck the end of a sharpened spear in the fire for a moment and then took it out.

ARTIST INTERVIEW: LANCE RED
ResAliens (RA) is trying something different this month. We’re interviewing artist Lance Red (LR) and publishing a story that he illustrated (read Walter Esselman’s “Sharp Stick” in this issue!). (Did you notice the same icon? Caught your eye, didn’t it?) Lance is an accomplished free-lance illustrator with aspirations of expanding his work to include illustrating books, comics, role-playing games, trading cards, video games, and more. You can find him at RedDayDream.com.

THE DIPLODOCUS EFFECT
by Rob Hunter
Hubert arrived in a cardboard box, the kind they used to mail painted turtles in when I was a kid sending in comic book coupons. Sally Murtaugh, my FedEx driver, pulled up one sunny May afternoon while I was exercising my electric hedge clippers. “Careful, Jim―you’ll cut the cord and kill us all.” We had dated in high school and she felt this gave her some room for comment.

THE OMELET
by Mark Joseph Kiewlak
Keith awoke one day and knew that the world was falling apart. It was only our belief that held it together. And that belief was weakening. The sky was formed from our imagination. We pictured the sky and there it was as we imagined it. But what if we imagined a huge crack across the sky, a tear in our reality? The world could crack open like an egg. We could spill out into the nothingness.

ETCHED IN STONE
by Kate Larkindale
A thin, misty rain falls as I walk up the beach. It is not a heavy rain, but the kind that sinks into your clothes almost insidiously, soaking you to the skin before you realize you are even damp. My hair clings to my cheeks in clumps, water dripping from the long ends. Beneath my feet the stones and pebbles glisten in the muted light, threads of pink and white running through the slate gray. My feet are bare. I like the sensation of these sea-smoothed rocks beneath my feet, some slippery smooth, some still coarse and ridged.

http://www.resaliens.com/

BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES: UPDATE

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

An Online Magazine of Literary Adventure Fantasy

Issue #38 -- Mar. 11, 2010
Also available in EPUB, PDF and Mobi PRC e-book formats, downloadable from the Issue's

Table of Contents.
"Sanji's Demon, Pt. I," by Richard Parks
I didn't have to ask whom he meant, but it seemed that Daiki, in this one regard, was not going to get his wish. The bushi produced two flea-bitten, scruffy men. Both were bruised and bloody but alive. Two more were not. Daiki kicked the body so that it rolled face up and studied the dead man's features. "It would seem the bandit has escaped me after all."

"In Memoriam," by Alys Sterling
I felt it, or rather Gaumont's body did, and with such force that it took me a moment to throw it off, a sudden desperation not to see what lay beneath that heavy drape of fabric. Yet I watched eagerly as the hands drew back the folds of grey material to reveal a granitic face, human in form, but so frozen that its wrinkles might have been carved from stone.

Audio Fiction Podcast 033
"A Skirt of Many Colors," by Catherine Mintz, from BCS #37
I go further in, to the ghosts. The first ghost is the ghost of the Boots. They are two holes in the wave of stone that half-fills a room of the old house. No telling who felt inside the pair of holes and found they were the shape of the inside of a boot. If you slide your feet into them—first checking that nothing has gotten there first—you can ask the ghost for a wish.