August 2024 ~ Stupefying Stories Magazine

Wednesday, August 28, 2024

The Never-ending FAQ • 28 August 2024

By ~brb August 28, 2024 No comments

Welcome to this week’s installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines and general-purpose unfocused ask-me-anything forum. If you have a question you’d like to ask about Stupefying Stories or Rampant Loon Press, feel free to post it as a comment here or to email it to our submissions address. I can’t guarantee we’ll post a public answer, but can promise every question we receive will be read and considered.

We’re up against a deadline this week and running behind schedule, so let’s just get right to the questions.

Q: Do I still have time to send you my entry for the Space: 1999 short story contest?

A: Yes The deadline is Labor Day, September 2nd. If we’re going to start running these things the week of September 9th, we need to have them in-hand at least a week earlier. Even earlier would be better.

More details here: Space: $19.99!

FWIW, this wasn’t meant to be a contest. I was thinking of it more as a role-playing thought exercise. IF Friday, September 13th, 2024, is indeed the 25th anniversary of the day the Moon was blown out of Earth’s orbit and launched across the galaxy—

We’d originally thought we’d be lucky to get four good stories, and at a stretch, we might see six. To our surprise we’ve received quite a few good stories that spring from this premise, so we’re reconsidering how many we’re going to accept. We may end up running these stories into a second week, or running some of them in October.

One comment, though. If your idea for your story is, “What effect would the disappearance of the Moon have on Earth’s werewolves?”, we’ve already seen that one. And seen it. And seen it. So unless your name is Julie Frost, it’s probably not necessary to send us that story again.

Q: What’s going on with Stupefying Stories magazine?

A: That’s why we’re up against a deadline. Detailed answers here. We’re not going to hit our planned September 1st deadline, but we’ll come reasonably close.

Q: How do I get my book onto your Friends of Stupefying Stories list?

A: That’s easy. Tell us about it. Sending an email usually works best. Include the Amazon link (or books2read, or whatever) if you can.

Yes, we’ll be happy to look at ARCs, either electronic or print. Query first.

We have a nice bunch of titles for the next update to the F.O.S.S. list, but it wouldn’t hurt to remind us that you have a book you’d like us to put on the list. We’re juggling cats here this week.

Q: Speaking of the F.O.S.S. list…

A: Yes, we know. There are problems galore with the StupefyingSF shop on Linktree. Most aggravating of all is that for reasons unknown, Linktree has slapped a “Sensitive Content” label on Stupefying Stories 23 through 26, effectively blocking sales, and all our attempts to find out why they’ve done so have returned an auto-generated email accusing us of “violating community standards,” without telling us which standards we’ve violated or how. (Their standards, by the way, are breathtaking in their length and scope. Honestly, having read their community standards statement, it’s hard to imagine how any piece of written fiction doesn’t violate at least one of them.)

The good news is, these Amazon direct links still work.

After a few frustrating and completely unproductive go-rounds with Linktree’s Content Police, we finally remembered that the reason why we got Linktree in the first place was because we needed it for our failed Instagram experiment. But given that the Instagram experiment did fail, well, we don’t need Linktree anymore, do we?

We’ll be canceling our Linktree account and closing out the StupefyingSF bookshop by the end of September. We’ll replace the F.O.S.S. list on Linktree with something that looks more like this.

It’s a bit of a pity. The one thing Linktree did for us that showed some promise was it gave us an easy way to consolidate all of our audio book links under one click.

But since almost no one clicked through on that link, it doesn’t justify keeping Linktree. Instead, we’ll go back to making more use of homegrown inline ads, like this one:

Q: Enough blathering about your sales problems. What did you think of Alien: Romulus?

A: Too long. Too loud. Seriously, I hated the audio mix. It’s been a long time since I found a movie physically painful to listen to. (For reference, that movie was Mamma Mia 2. Pierce Brosnan is a terrific actor but should never be allowed to sing in public.)

If you’ve seen Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien: Resurrection, you’ve already seen this movie. There is nothing new in this movie. The set pieces are all lifted from earlier movies. The action is all lifted from earlier movies. The most important lines of dialogue are all repeats of Ellen Ripley’s most important lines in earlier movies. If this was a record album they wouldn’t even bother to pretend it was a new product: it would be called Alien’s Greatest Hits. The one worthwhile thing in this movie is David Jonsson’s performance as Andy, the obligatory twitchy and unpredictable android. (You’d think Weyland-Yutani would have those things debugged by now.)

The absolutely worst thing about this movie is that through the “miracle” of CGI and practical effects they brought the late Sir Ian Holm back to life one more time, to play essentially the same character he played in the original Alien, 45 years ago. I hope his estate got a huge pile of money for letting them desecrate his corpse like this.

Q: Okay, that’s not a recommendation. In that case, what did you think of Deadpool and Wolverine?

A: Speaking of desecrating corpses…

Actually, I thought Deadpool and Wolverine was hilarious, and a lot of fun. The editing could have been tighter, but it was a great wrap-up and send-off not just to the Deadpool series, but to pretty much every movie made by every studio that has owned a piece of Marvel intellectual property since… 2000? 1998, even?

This isn’t a movie that will win new fans, but then, that’s not its point. If you didn’t love Deadpool and Deadpool 2, don’t bother with this one. In fact, if you haven’t seen at least Deadpool, Deadpool 2, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Logan, large parts of this movie will make absolutely no sense to you. For that matter, it wouldn’t hurt to have at least a passing familiarity with the whole X-Men series of movies, as well as The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Elektra—oh what the hell, Blade, as long as we’re at it—Captain America, all the Avengers and Avengers-adjacent movies and TV series…

But the most important one to have watched before watching this one, besides Deadpool and Deadpool 2, is Logan, as this movie begins as a direct segue from the ending of Logan. At the end of that movie Wolverine finally dies, nobly, heroically, sacrificing his centuries-long life to save his cloned daughter and a whole new tribe of mutant children. It’s a total tear-jerker of an ending…

And then this movie begins with Deadpool digging up Wolverine’s corpse, to use it like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and takes off running from there and never stops.

Yeah. Great fun. Total nerdgasm. I don’t think I’ll ever need to watch another Marvel movie again. This one doesn’t just end the Deadpool series, it’s a fitting headstone for the entire Marvel cinematic universe, and should be the end of them all.

Not that that will stop Disney from making more. I mean, just look at what they’re doing with Star Wars.

Q: Enough stalling! Why is there a Pete Wood Challenge banner at the top of this column?

A: Because Pete Wood is not merely an attorney, he is an attorney who specializes in appeals. So when I told him, months ago, that it was time to shut down The Pete Wood Challenge, he immediately began to craft his appeal.

I was not eager to shut down TPWC. Over the years we’ve made a lot of new friends through the challenge, and it’s let us publish some terrific flash fiction. But the hard truth of it is that with each new challenge the readership numbers continue to shrink, and the pool of authors willing to participate in the challenge continues to shrink, and I didn’t feel like sticking with it until, like The Incredible Shrinking Man, the diminishing returns finally diminished to nothing and evanesced out of existence.

Pete, however, is not one to give up. He kept trying different angles, and working different strategies, until he eventually wore me down and I relented. So here we go, one more time. This is either The Last Pete Wood Challenge, or The Pete Wood Challenge: The New Beginning. Which it is is up to you.

Turning the mic over to Pete, now:

THE OFFSEASON CHALLENGE

Bruce, this is what I posted on CODEX. This challenge is open to both members of Codex and, for the first time, non-members of Codex.

If this works out, we’ll have more challenges in the future. It’s all going to come down to readership. This may be the last challenge. It may be the first of many.

Write a flash fiction story of up to 150 words, not including the prompt. Your story must include the phrase “the offseason” or “the off-season” or “the off season.”

Deadline is October 20th at seven a.m. EST.

This challenge is open to the general public. However, at least two stories will be from codexians and at least one will be from the general public. Winning stories will be published the week of November 4, 2024.

Any genre is fine. BUT, no stories about politics. No analogies about politics. No characters who are obviously patterned after politicians. So, if you want to write a clever story about Sheriff Harris and Deputy Walz and the gunfight with the Trump gang, don’t write that story. You get the idea.

Prizes will be awarded as follows: 1st place- $20 2nd-$15 3rd-$10 Honorable Mention (1-3)-$5

HOW TO SUBMIT AN ENTRY

Codex members: Post your stories in the announcement thread on Codex.
Non-codex members: Email your story to southernfriedsfwriter@gmail.com
Put “submission off season” in the subject line.

One story per writer, and codexians cannot submit with the general public.

Good luck!

“Feline” • by M. Legree

By ~brb August 26, 2024 No comments

The girl laughed at him when he told her she had beautiful eyes.

They were sitting at the bar inside the Hotel De Grandin, just the two of them and the man behind the counter. Shrader thought he saw the barkeep smirk in the mirror in back of the serried ranks of liquor bottles, but he wasn’t much discouraged. He might be new to London, but he thought women were the same all over the world.

The girl was looking into the bottom of her glass. Shrader offered to buy her another round. “What are you having?” he asked.

She said she was drinking Scotch whisky. She had hints of some exotic accent in her voice, which made him want to know her all the more. Shrader nodded at the barkeep and laid a half crown on the counter.

“God save the King!” he said, clinking his glass against hers.

The girl just smiled and sipped her Scotch. He decided to try another tack.

“You can probably tell I’m not British,” he said. “My name’s Shrader, from the States. I’m in flame-retardant fabrics—jackets for firemen, blankets for welders, like that.”

“No doubt a lucrative trade,” said the girl. “Especially if Herr Hitler has his way.” She still hadn’t offered her name.

“Then you don’t agree with the PM? No appeasement for you, eh?”

“Hitler only respects strength. The British would do well to understand that.” The girl shrugged. “Thank you for the drink, Mr. Shrader.” She turned gracefully on her seat with her knees together, preparatory to standing up.

“At least tell me your name,” said Shrader.

For a moment he thought she would demur, then: “You can call me Liné,” she said.

“LEE-nay.” Shrader repeated her name carefully to fix it in his memory—his salesman’s habit on meeting someone new.

“It’s an old Spanish name,” said the girl. “Or rather, Latin. But recently I’ve been living in Berlin. Berlin is the center of the world, these days…”

“Tell me about it,” said Shrader.

He was about to go on when the barkeep leaned over the counter at him, both hands flat on the polished teak. “If you don’t mind, sir. I’ll be closing up soon.”

Annoyed, Shrader turned to look at him: a red-faced Cockney in a waiter’s white shirtsleeves and black tie. He looked closer, saw a spot of color on the bartender’s lapel. It was a pin, an enameled roundel with a white flash on a field of blue. British Union party. Nazi sympathizers.

“I want nothing else from you,” said Shrader coldly. “You damned Limey fascist—”

“I’ve a right to my own views,” said the bartender. He huffed, gave the counter a violent swipe with his towel and turned his back.

Shrader was about to say something more when the girl put her hand on his arm.

In the end he escorted her back to her room, traversing the long, carpeted halls of the De Grandin with an arm about her waist. He moved in close while she searched her pocketbook for the room key, brushing back the auburn hair from the nape of her neck. She turned and kissed him hard then, biting his lower lip before pulling back with her palms flat against his chest. She had dainty hands in gloves of fine white kid.

“Not here,” she said. “Someone might come.”

Inside the room, she left her pocketbook on the nightstand, turned back the counterpane, and told him to get into bed while she changed. When she came back from the cloakroom she was wearing a printed silk kimono, sashed at the waist with a broad green obi, her hands hidden inside the sleeves of the gown.

She stood for a moment at the bedside, smiling down at him. Then she turned and opened the gown and let it fall away from her white shoulders with a whisper of silk on skin. Her body underneath the dress was long and fit, with smooth powerful thighs and buttocks. A tail of the same ginger-colored shade as her auburn locks depended from the base of her spine; switched restlessly against the backs of her knees. She faced him then with her hands turned out from her sides. She had not removed the white kid gloves.

“Do you still think me beautiful?” she said.

From breast to groin ran a double row of teats, eight in all.

“I went to Berlin for these,” she said. She put a finger in her eye and when she took it out again the iris was all golden with a vertical slit for a pupil and there was a little glass circlet between her thumb and forefinger. “They’re called contact lenses,” said Liné. She removed the lens from her other eye as she spoke and put them both into a compact she took out of her pocketbook. “The Germans didn’t invent them, but as with everything else, it seems, they have perfected them. I had these made specially for me by Dr. Heinrich Wohlk himself.”

She began tugging at her fingers, removing the white gloves at last. Underneath she had short digits with pads and hooked talons. She reached into her mouth and removed a dental plate. Her real teeth were all sharp and perfect.

“Yes,” he said. He stared at her. He felt that she was what he’d been looking for all his life without knowing it.

She put one of her short-fingered hands to his face and raked it gently down his cheek.

“I’m adopted,” he said suddenly. “My parents sent me to all the best doctors and dentists. So, I know about Dr. Wohlk. And my teeth are all capped.” He held up a hand and waggled his fingers. “Declawed. Cropped, too.”

“You poor thing,” said Liné.

Afterwards they lay together in the mess of silk bedclothes and talked long into the night. Liné told him that her family had used the surname Bera for centuries, although they were not, of course, really Turkish. They didn’t belong to any nation known to man. They belonged only to their own hidden nation. She told him, too, about her time in Germany.

“Hitler has the Nazis so terrified of a Jewish conspiracy that they can’t see what’s right in front of them.”

“You met the man?”

“I wanted to. He has an eye for the ladies, you know. I thought I might get close to him, get him alone—”

“And?”

She shrugged her lithe shoulders. “Curiosity, perhaps. Or perhaps I thought I might save the world.”

“You’ve been reading too many novels,” laughed Shrader. “Like that British fellow, Household. Rogue Male, indeed!”

They were still awake when the sun came up, and Shrader offered to go down for breakfast. “I’m an American in my habits,” he said. “And I prefer coffee, just plain black coffee. But I can bring tea and milk if you want—?”

“Oh, no,” said Liné. “I like a strong cup, like the Turks. Darker than you think.”

After breakfast they went out, arm in arm, to see all the sights of their great, cruel city.

Chained to a desk during the day, M. Legree is released at dusk to write genre fiction. Guarded by a pack of savage mongrels, he lives alone in a Depression-era duplex overlooking Brays Bayou in the historical East End of Houston, Texas. Preferring to live in the past, Legree rereads the old tales of Stevenson, Poe, and Wells. His steampunk horror tale “Victorian Resistance & the Lords Insectile” appeared in Issue #9 of Cossmass Infinities; his dark fantasy flash fiction “Dryad Harvest” is available in the anthology Tales of Fear, Superstition, and Doom; and a Holmesian pastiche, “Colonel Malcontent,” is forthcoming later this year in the anthology Ethereal Nightmares: The Second Sleep.

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The Week in Review • 25 August 2024

By ~brb August 25, 2024 1 comment

Welcome to The Week in Review, our Sunday wrap-up for those too busy to follow Stupefying Stories on a daily basis. Our focus this week was on the results of another Pete Wood Challenge, so this week we published four flash fiction stories all keying off the seed idea, “The Butler Did It.” We also clarified our publishing plans for the remainder of 2024, and then we embarked on a quixotic quest to find the perfect low-sodium, gluten-free, red beans and rice recipe.

“In the Line of Duty,” by Gustavo Bondoni

The evidence from the crime scene left no doubt: the butler did. The mystery baffling the investigators was, how?

Published: August 19, 2024 (Honorable Mention)

“A Conversation Held at the Annual Meeting of the National Association of Butler Assassins,” by Carol Scheina

Remember the good old days? Polishing silver, pouring wine, murdering guests? (Sigh.)

Published: August 20, 2024 (Bronze)

The Never-ending FAQ • 21 August 2024

Nailing down our publishing plans for the remaining four months of 2024, for both SHOWCASE and Stupefying Stories issues #27 through #30. READ THIS.

“How Paranormal Investigators Prepare for an Expedition,” by Ian Li

It’s so hard to find a good domestic, these days.

Published: August 22, 2024 (Silver)

“A Change of Management,” by S. R. Kriger

We thought he was bluffing, but the butler did it. He really did.

Published: August 23, 2024 (Gold)

The Never-ending FAQ: Tools & Tradecraft • the quick & easy low-carb low-sodium gluten-free red beans and rice stir-fry!

In which we set out to find a recipe and end up in Wonderland. Have you had your disodium guanylate today?

Published: August 24, 2024

Did you enjoy these stories? Why not check out our magazine? It’s free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, and you can get the four most recent issues with just one click.

(Or get just one at a time, if that’s what you’d really prefer.)

The Never-ending FAQ: Tools & Tradecraft • the quick & easy low-carb low-sodium gluten-free red beans and rice stir-fry!

By ~brb August 24, 2024 No comments

This all began with ribs.

I was looking for something to throw on the grill for dinner and found a 2-lb package of boneless country-style pork ribs in the freezer. After deciding it looked promising, I pulled it out to thaw, and then thought: Okay, what goes with ribs?

Red beans and rice, obviously.

Looking for just a little taste, to see if you’ll like Stupefying Stories? Check out SHOWCASE #1, our 99¢ sampler plate, now free on Kindle Unlimited! From science fiction so hard it clanks to magical fantasy so whimsical it sweeps you away to Neverland, this book has a little bit of everything, to show you what our special brand of fantastic fiction is all about. Get it today!

This is where everything began to go askew. I checked the pantry and found that while I had plenty of packages of different red beans and rice mixes on-hand, they all had sodium levels that were through the roof and not one was gluten-free. I’m supposed to be on a restricted-sodium diet, and while I’m not gluten-sensitive myself, I have enough friends and family members who are that I decided to make it a point to make a batch of low-sodium gluten-free red beans and rice from scratch.

I mean, how hard can it be? It’s just beans and rice, right?

PRIVATEERS OF MARS: A SWASHBUCKLING TALE OF SPACE PIRATES, CRAZED TYRANTS, AND DEADBEAT CLIENTS, by Matthew Castleman

One of the reader reviews really nailed it: “It reads like the first three episodes of a great science fiction show you wish someone would make.” While we’re all waiting for some clever person at Amazon or Netflix to wake up and option this property, you can do your part by encouraging author Matthew Castleman to write even more of these great stories! He wants to write them! Encourage him to do it!

CHECK IT OUT! READ IT NOW! IT’S FREE, ON KINDLE UNLIMITED!

Thus began my quixotic quest to find a recipe for gluten-free red beans and rice online. The Internet, it turns out, is full of such recipes, to the point of being incoherent noise. Some of the recipes called for very specific or even preposterous ingredients that left me wondering, Seriously? You put that in red beans and rice? For love of God, why? And most of the recipes are written just like this, as chatty, breathless, disjointed paragraphs…

THE MIDNIGHT GROUND, by Eric Dontigney

From bestselling author and frequent Stupefying Stories contributor Eric Dontigney comes THE MIDNIGHT GROUND, a terrific paranormal thriller. Rather than say more about it I’ll just say, “Check out the reader reviews and ratings.” There are more than a hundred of them out there, and they’re overwhelmingly 4- and 5-stars. (If you get nothing but 5-star reviews, you’re either not trying hard enough or else buying reviews.) THE MIDNIGHT GROUND is available on Kindle, Audible, and in trade paperback, or FREE on Kindle Unlimited.

Separated by ads. After a while I began to realize that most of the web sites I was finding these recipes on were sponsored by the makers of the very specific and/or preposterous ingredients called for in the recipes; even the ones that claimed not to be.

SCOUT’S HONOR, by Henry Vogel

From acclaimed “swords and planets” author Henry Vogel comes Scout’s Honor, the book that launched his bestselling Terran Scout Corps series. If you like your heroes brave and true, your heroines smart and feisty, and your space opera plots racing ahead at breakneck speed, you’ll love the Scout series.

Just 99¢ for the first book in the series!

Or perhaps the latter web sites were just monetized to the point of distraction. And the chatty, nattering, get-to-the-damn-point-already style of writing common to these sorts of sites, which a reader criticized in my post last week, The Ten-Minute Low-Carb Personal Pizza, wasn’t a flaw or evidence that the writer was an airhead. It was a feature.

THE FUGITIVE HEIR, by Henry Vogel

From the acclaimed author of the Scout series comes The Fugitive Heir, the book that launched his bestselling Connaught Family Chronicles series. If you like your space adventures with a bit less Burroughs and a bit more Heinlein, check out The Fugitive Heir!

Just 99¢ for the first book in the series!

The entire point of the web page was not to get the readers to the actual recipe, which when finally found was typically a list of a half-dozen ingredients and a half-page of instructions. It was to make the reader scroll through ad after ad after ad…

Having fun yet? Why not bail out of this parade of ads now and check out our magazine?

Scrolling’ scrollin’ scrollin’

Keep them readers scrollin’

Remember, if you’re not paying for a product, you are the product. Or rather, your eyeballs, delivered to the sponsor, are the product. Thankfully most sponsors settle for getting your attention, not any actual body parts. Although that will likely change in the not-too-distant dystopian future.

THE BOOK OF JUDITH: SIXTEEN TALES OF LIFE, WONDER, AND MAGIC, by Judith Field

Judith Field writes wonderful, sweet, smart and charming contemporary urban fantasy stories, which we’re always delighted to find in our inbox. For some reason this collection of her stories never sold well in the U.S., though; perhaps her stories are just “too British” to appeal to an American audience. Or perhaps not: perhaps, if you subscribe to BritBox, and especially if you liked Rosemary & Thyme, you might want to take a closer look at this one.

Check it out, please. Consider reading a few stories. It’s free on Kindle Unlimited now, so you can sample it and pick and choose stories as you please.

Eventually I said “[intercourse] this, gleaned the general sense of the information I needed from a half-dozen or more different online recipes, and began construction.

Step 1. Starting with a pound of red beans—

Crap. I’m out of canned red beans. I have plenty of dried red beans, but all the recipes for using dried beans begin with starting them soaking yesterday, to have them ready for use today.

Just buy a damn book already, okay?

If you already have SS#25, take a look at one of the books on the Friends of Stupefying Stories list.

There are dozens of books in the StupefyingSF bookshop. Audio books, too. Check ‘em out!

Hmm. I don’t seem to have a working time machine right now, but do have an instant pot. Maybe I can use the instant pot to rehydrate the beans? A quick Internet search for instructions on how to make red beans and rice using an instant pot—

Opened up another bottomless rabbit hole of sponsored sites. Okay, screw that. Black beans will have to do. Next step?

Step 2. Using [name redacted]® brand Cajun seasoning—

Say what? Does every damn step in every set of instructions call for using some name-brand product? (With helpful links suggesting exactly where to buy it.) And precisely measured amounts of this or that name-brand seasoning?

Tell you what. I’ll just go out to the garden and grab—

Oh, that poblano pepper looks good. Maybe I’ll need to bolster it with a green bell pepper later. I’ll decide when it’s cooking.

And precisely measure amounts of oregano and thyme? What is this “precisely” nonsense? I’ll just go down to the oregano patch and grab—

“Some” oregano. Yes, “some” seems like the right amount.

To my considerable surprise, oregano survives Minnesota winters quite nicely, provided I bury the oregano patch in leaves in the fall. The rabbit-resistant fence around the raised bed works very well for keeping the leaves in place and the oregano bedded and protected through the winter.

Sometimes the sage survives the winter. Sometimes not. If it doesn’t, no big deal. I can always plant more in the spring. It’s not like I use a lot of sage.

Speaking of surviving winter, be sure to read “Finding Spring,” by Sippora Coffeldt. You’ll find it in SHOWCASE #1, our 99¢ sampler plate, now free on Kindle Unlimited! From science fiction so hard it clanks to magical fantasy so whimsical it sweeps you away to Neverland, this book has a little bit of everything, to show you what our special brand of fantastic fiction is all about. Get it today!

And “some” thyme. Grab a big bunch. Then some more. I’ve never been able to keep a thyme plant alive over winter, so it’s use it or lose it.

Then… Bay leaf? That was unexpected. But okay, the consensus is that ~~red~~ black beans and rice requires some number of bay leaves. No problem.

One of these years I may be able to pick bay leaves without saying, “Brew three tana leaves under the light of the full moon to create the elixir that keeps Kharis alive, and nine tana leaves to give him animation, but you must never give Kharis more than nine tana leaves or he will become an uncontrollable monster.”

One of these years. It hasn’t happened yet.

JIMI PLAYS DEAD: TWO STORIES ABOUT SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK & ROLL, by Bruce Bethke

Speaking of movies and ancient undead things from the distant past, remember 45 r.p.m. records? Remember how when you bought one, it was like rolling the dice? Sure, the “A” side was always the hit single you wanted, but the “B” side… Yeah, it might be something brilliant you’d overlooked before and were overjoyed to discover and share with all your friends. Or it might be a turkey like “Tapioca Tundra.”

Here, then, in a special hit single package, is “Jimi Plays Dead,” Bruce Bethke’s beloved and Nebula-nominated story of an obsessed guitarist who will do anything to sound exactly like Jimi Hendrix. But on the B side you’ll find “Buck Turner and The Spud from Space,” Bethke’s published but forgotten tale of airport bars, garage bands, kids with dreams of making it big, and of an alien who comes to Earth seeking intelligent life, but through an unfortunate miscalculation ends up landing in Hollywood.

Is “Buck Turner” brilliant? Is it daft? Is it just begging to be optioned and turned into a low-budget YouTube short? (Bethke thinks so. Just two sets and three speaking parts. C’mon, doesn’t someone want to take a crack at it?)

CHECK IT OUT! READ IT NOW! IT’S FREE, ON KINDLE UNLIMITED!

Finally, Tabasco® sauce? The heck? Why use Tabasco sauce when I can just toss in—

Oh, those two little peppers look about right.

Add to that some garlic, celery, red onion, cooked brown rice…

At last, I had my ingredients together and was just about ready to begin making my beans and rice side dish, while taking plenty of photos and careful notes detailing exactly how I did it.

When it started raining, and I had to scrap my plans to slow-cook the ribs on the grill and come up with a hasty improvisation instead. So I didn’t shoot any more photos or take any more notes.

Ultimately, my low-sodium, low-carb, gluten-free beans and rice from scratch came out tasting just about right, but looking a bit off. I suspect it’s because I failed to include all the Red Dye #5, thiamine mononitrate, hydrolyzed corn protein, disodium guanylate, and silicon dioxide all the commercial mixes insist are necessary. Shrug. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

So tonight, I’m going to try making a low-carb, low-sodium, gluten-free garlic ginger chicken stir-fry from scratch.

I mean, it’s just garlic, ginger, and chicken, right? How hard can it be?

If you like the stories we’re publishing and don’t like being carpet-bombed with ads, become a supporter today. We do Stupefying Stories out of pure love for genre fiction, but in publishing as in tennis, love means nothing. To keep Stupefying Stories going at this level we need to raise at least $500 USD monthly, and rather than doing so with pledge breaks or crowd-funding campaigns, we’d rather have supporters. If just 100 people commit to giving $5 monthly, we can keep going at this level indefinitely. If we can raise more, we will pay our authors more.

Please don’t make us escalate to posting pictures of sad kittens and puppies…

“A Change of Management” • by S. R. Kriger

By ~brb August 23, 2024 No comments

We thought he was bluffing, but the butler did it, he really did.

And we weren’t being that awful to begin with. The scullery maids were giggling, and the kitchen boy might have pulled the cat’s tail. Nothing old Parker would have minded.

But the new butler said, “If you don’t stop this instant, I’m turning the manor around.”

And he did. The following morning, instead of waking up to Saturday, we found he’d turned us back to Friday. We were ever so good—nobody giggled and nothing boiled over—but the next day was Friday again too.

“Please, sir,” I said, “Sunday was supposed to be my day off.”

“And it shall be.” He showed me a spot I’d missed on the silver. “But first, practice makes perfect.”

S. R. Kriger (she/her) is a Canadian writer of speculative fiction. You can find more about her and her work at https://srkriger.com/blog/

The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link.

This time the challenge was to write a flash fiction story of no more than 125 words in length that plays off that old warhorse of mystery fiction: “the butler did it.”

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“How Paranormal Investigators Prepare for an Expedition” • by Ian Li

By ~brb August 22, 2024 No comments

When Jake pulls his van up to Judy’s house, his jaw drops. What kind of paranormal investigator owns such a luxurious mansion? Judy isn’t packed yet, so he pops inside to help.

“I can’t believe we have to travel to remote locations to look for ghosts,” she complains.

“Well, credible leads are rare nowadays.”

Under a crystal chandelier, Judy wrangles with a fancy self-unfolding tent, but it refuses to fold. Jake hates wasting time when he could be chasing ghosts. “Let me try. Go load the van.”

Judy is skeptical Jake can do any better, until he emerges triumphant three minutes later. “How did you manage it so quickly?” she asks.

“Oh, the butler did it for me.”

Judy creases her brows. “Jake… I don’t have a butler.”

Ian Li (he/him) is a Chinese-Canadian writer of speculative fiction and poetry. As an economist and developer, he also loves spreadsheets, statistical curiosities, and brain teasers. His writing is published or forthcoming in Orion’s Belt, Abyss & Apex, and Worlds of Possibility, among other venues. Learn more as well as at https://ian-li.com.

His most recent appearances in our pages were “Summit, in Memory,” “Hosting a Tempest,” “The Potato Singer,” and the absolutely delightful duel of wizards, “Wielder of Wit.”