Fantasy Writers!
Yesteryear Fiction needs you! We are currently accepting submissions in the following genres!
- Fantasy
- Steampunk
- Modern Magic
- Surreal Fantasy
- Magic Realism
- Gothic Fantasy
- Weird West
- Historic Fiction
- And many more!
Check us out online and send in your best!
http://www.yesteryearfiction.com
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Get Fractal!
Today marks the launch of Thunderune Publishing's latest online addition: FRACTAL NOVELS.Fractal Novels is a collaborative art project, which means everyone is encouraged to submit!
Read the stories, find a spot that inspires you, then tack on anything (anything– paintings, pictures, words, fragments, found art, sound, anything as long as it is your own creation) and take that spot in a new direction! It's a community canvas just waiting to be painted!
Submit your side of the story today: Submission Guidelines!
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Night Before Zombiemas
I’ll never forget that light, that pulsing strobe of red and green as it lit up the snowy night sky like some tainted swarm of impossibly flying patrol cars. It was terrifying, eerie as it played among the blistering, pockmarked shadows clinging to the faces of the zombie mob, the shambling horde of eager corpses that yawned on into the night, moaning as they sought every sleeping body nestled snug in its bed, checked every house for survivors twice. My house was no different; they came in through the doors, the windows, the chimney. My only hope of escape was the second story, to climb out the window and onto the snow covered roof, to find up there some way to get down or get across to the next house before their prancing feet and pawing hands could find me.
But I was not so lucky.
No sooner did I reach the slope of the roof than what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a brilliant light that stabbed down at me from the heavens, blinding and hot against my skin even as I threw my arms in front of my face. There was a whistle, a shout, a crack of a whip, and then in the haze I heard his voice, knew the terrible laugh of the one who had spurred on the zombie horde, the one whose whip drove them forward and into the sleeping streets, kept them hungry, eager for human flesh. I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick, vicious overlord of the northern skies.
There was no time, no choice– I ran, but quickly realized that running barefoot on a frosty, angled roof is no vision of sugar-plums. I lost my balance almost immediately, slid sideways and then spun on the curve of one foot right off the edge and into snowy infinity. The ground came up at me like a flash, tore open my leg and slashed up my hands. In an instant, I knew I was done for, could hear the horde as it closed in on me, hungry to taste the bruised and broken flesh that my fall had opened for them. Cruel, talon-like fingers reached toward me, and for a moment I saw my death, whole body stiffening, chilling with the harsh realization that I was about to die.
And then Mrs. Rosenschwartz appeared.
She came hurtling out of nowhere like a flash in the night, her blood-stained walker and gnashing dentures a vision of salvation, the swinging reusable shopping bag at her side crammed with goodies meant for the zombie horde. In one swift movement, she plunged one gnarled hand into the sack and tore loose a brown bottle whose white, plastic lid was no match for her porcelain chompers. I caught the twinkle in her eye as she bit free the cap and hurled the bottle into the mob, spraying countless numbers of the undead with a clear liquid that bit into their rotting flesh with foamy violence, dropping them in agonized heaps of writhing, screaming putridity.
“Here, take one, sonny.” She said suddenly, pressing one of the brown bottles into my hand with a grin. “Closest thing left on God’s green earth to holy water when it comes to these rotting punks!”
She didn’t wait for me to respond, just smiled that iridescent, be-dentured smile covered in the stains acquired in countless years of hard reps with a mug of coffee and a dedicated patience to the tutelage of a cigarette. In another instant, she was pushing her way back into the fray again, tossing bottles of the stuff right and left, draining each plastic carcass out upon the convulsing flesh of the risen dead. Awestruck and amazed, I looked at the label of the bottle, eyes wondering after the name of the magical liquid I clutched in my shivering hands. I found the name almost immediately. Hydrogen Peroxide.
I looked up in shock, saw the foaming carnage all around me. With a few well aimed tosses, old Mrs. Rosenschwartz had leveled the endless march of undead under a hail of writhing, bubbly torture whose burn fed upon the rot and disease inherent in every inch of corrupted flesh. Those zombies still under St. Nick’s control quivered in fear as Mrs. Rosenschwartz pulled another bottle of the magic liquid from her still bulging sack, but they soon lost even that speck of nerve and retreated like a host of holiday shoppers going home after Black Friday. St. Nick grumbled and hissed and gathered them all, then he hitched up his ship as his fiery engines gave a whistle and the whole horde flew away like the burning, rocket-powered down of a cyberpunk thistle.
But I swear that I heard him say as he roared out of sight;
I’ll get you next Christmas kid; you just got lucky tonight.
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Santa Claus believed in E.S. Wynn when he was a child, but later found out that the man in the khaki shorts and loud hawaiian shirts that wrote novels on the wall on Christmas Eve for an offering of cheese danish and Doctor Pepper was actually just his father in disguise.
But I was not so lucky.
No sooner did I reach the slope of the roof than what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a brilliant light that stabbed down at me from the heavens, blinding and hot against my skin even as I threw my arms in front of my face. There was a whistle, a shout, a crack of a whip, and then in the haze I heard his voice, knew the terrible laugh of the one who had spurred on the zombie horde, the one whose whip drove them forward and into the sleeping streets, kept them hungry, eager for human flesh. I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick, vicious overlord of the northern skies.
There was no time, no choice– I ran, but quickly realized that running barefoot on a frosty, angled roof is no vision of sugar-plums. I lost my balance almost immediately, slid sideways and then spun on the curve of one foot right off the edge and into snowy infinity. The ground came up at me like a flash, tore open my leg and slashed up my hands. In an instant, I knew I was done for, could hear the horde as it closed in on me, hungry to taste the bruised and broken flesh that my fall had opened for them. Cruel, talon-like fingers reached toward me, and for a moment I saw my death, whole body stiffening, chilling with the harsh realization that I was about to die.
And then Mrs. Rosenschwartz appeared.
She came hurtling out of nowhere like a flash in the night, her blood-stained walker and gnashing dentures a vision of salvation, the swinging reusable shopping bag at her side crammed with goodies meant for the zombie horde. In one swift movement, she plunged one gnarled hand into the sack and tore loose a brown bottle whose white, plastic lid was no match for her porcelain chompers. I caught the twinkle in her eye as she bit free the cap and hurled the bottle into the mob, spraying countless numbers of the undead with a clear liquid that bit into their rotting flesh with foamy violence, dropping them in agonized heaps of writhing, screaming putridity.
“Here, take one, sonny.” She said suddenly, pressing one of the brown bottles into my hand with a grin. “Closest thing left on God’s green earth to holy water when it comes to these rotting punks!”
She didn’t wait for me to respond, just smiled that iridescent, be-dentured smile covered in the stains acquired in countless years of hard reps with a mug of coffee and a dedicated patience to the tutelage of a cigarette. In another instant, she was pushing her way back into the fray again, tossing bottles of the stuff right and left, draining each plastic carcass out upon the convulsing flesh of the risen dead. Awestruck and amazed, I looked at the label of the bottle, eyes wondering after the name of the magical liquid I clutched in my shivering hands. I found the name almost immediately. Hydrogen Peroxide.
I looked up in shock, saw the foaming carnage all around me. With a few well aimed tosses, old Mrs. Rosenschwartz had leveled the endless march of undead under a hail of writhing, bubbly torture whose burn fed upon the rot and disease inherent in every inch of corrupted flesh. Those zombies still under St. Nick’s control quivered in fear as Mrs. Rosenschwartz pulled another bottle of the magic liquid from her still bulging sack, but they soon lost even that speck of nerve and retreated like a host of holiday shoppers going home after Black Friday. St. Nick grumbled and hissed and gathered them all, then he hitched up his ship as his fiery engines gave a whistle and the whole horde flew away like the burning, rocket-powered down of a cyberpunk thistle.
But I swear that I heard him say as he roared out of sight;
I’ll get you next Christmas kid; you just got lucky tonight.
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Santa Claus believed in E.S. Wynn when he was a child, but later found out that the man in the khaki shorts and loud hawaiian shirts that wrote novels on the wall on Christmas Eve for an offering of cheese danish and Doctor Pepper was actually just his father in disguise.
New Site!
One of the keys to bringing the things into your life that you want is not to wish for them and see them as being separate from yourself, it is seeing yourself as having those things already and truly living within that better life.
Manifestation Wall exists as a place where you can weave reality. It is a place where you can dream among the global consciousness and reach out to the universe, projecting a reality that you want to see come to pass. It is a place where you can write your dreams as reality, live as if they had already come to pass, and place that reality into the greater fabric of human global consciousness.
Take a look around, see some of the dreams that have already been put out there, and contribute some of your own.
Write 1 Sub 1 2011
Up for a writing challenge next year? Check out Write1Sub1, where writers like you will be following in the footsteps of legendary author Ray Bradbury by writing and submitting a new story every week!
Check out Write1Sub1!
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Check out Write1Sub1!
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New Projects
In my quest to explore art in all its forms, I have taken it upon myself to write a screenplay. It's definitely proving to be a new experience with its own unique challenges, but it's fun too! Once the work is complete, I'll be releasing it in book form for readers to enjoy. Stay tuned-- once the piece is done and polished, the next step will be putting together everything needed to put it on the stage! No obstacle is insurmountable! Full speed ahead!
How To Move On
New article up on Hubpages: How To Move On After Being In An Unhealthy Relationship! Check it out today! :)
The Death of Sci-Fi
Something interesting was happening in sci-fi in the 1980's, or rather, wasn’t happening. While US, Australian and Japanese Sci-Fi took off, Britain’s contributions died steadily until, in 1986, the only sci-fi left which was being produced domestically was the long running series Doctor Who , a few projects that were quickly killed (like Star Cops) a handful of books, and a few radio adaptations. Why did this happen? Where was Britain in the middle of what was arguably one of the most, if not the most profound decade in the history of science fiction? Find out -->
Libraries and Funding
Funding issues. They’re one of the biggest challenges any library today faces, one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome when they hit, and one of the most dangerous things to navigate around– issues that can even prove fatal for any library in the worst of circumstances. To read more about the problem (and some of the current solutions to it) click here or click the picture above.
