“Efficiency Optimization” • by Jeff Currier

Mrs. C’s newest passion? A.I. data analysis.

First, she tackled elf toy-production workflows. The warehouses were filled by Labor Day. Santa grumbled.

“More time to spend with me, dear,” she said. 

Next came reindeer breeding and reindeer game reorganization. The team was selected by Halloween. Santa fumed.

Nice/naughty discrimination was done in a jiffy, lists double-checked by Thanksgiving. Santa groused.

“Isn’t relaxing with me before Christmas wonderful?” she asked.

Finally, route minimization. That required real-time tweaking, so she tagged along. Santa seethed.

“Next year, you’ll return to me in no time.”

Above the clouds, Santa looped a corkscrew. Mrs. Claus, unsecured, plummeted away.

Now, thinking of the off season brought a twinkle to his eye.

“Ho, ho, ho! Finally, more than one night of alone time!”

________________________________________

Jeff Currier works too many jobs so has little time to write, but the words kept screaming for release. Jeff finally relented and set them free, in very small batches. Now they’ve run amok with no telling what mischief they’ve caused. You can find them roaming in various anthologies or in Sci Phi Journal, Stupefying Stories, Dark Moments, and Flash Point SF.

If you enjoyed this story, you might also want to read:

“The Foulest of Them All”

“The Fate of Time Travelers”

“Temporal Avoidance Game”

“A Curse and a Blessing”

 

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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 150 words in length that played off the phrase: “the off season.”

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“Tonight, We Embrace the Dark” • by Gideon P. Smith

We hated the off-season.

Cold, pickled fish, salted meats, hardtack. Fumbling in a year-long frigid night. Fearing what lurked in the dark.

Until, like a drop of viscid honey, our planet’s Sun slowly rotated into view. At on-season’s dawn, we threw aside furs. Iridescent flower’s perfumes exploded. Seed pods popped and sweet, pungent fruits hung from every tree. Fresh juices spilling from our lips, we danced. Leapt. Made love. We swam naked, treasuring on-season’s warming rays. 

But then, foreigners arrived, bringing gifts: generators; batteries. Everything changed.

At first, we marveled at our new off-season. Refrigerated foods, warmth, light. But when on-season dawned, the joy of first-light was gone. Our parties felt forced. Off-season had become just on-season’s paler sister. Life was monotonous. Our children softened.

We’d lost off-season’s beauty. Fierce, harsh, and strong. It’d made us who we were. So tonight, we destroy the generators. Reclaim nature’s rhythm.

Tonight, we re-embrace the dark.

________________________________________

Gideon P. Smith has written for SFWA, BSFA Focus Magazine, Wyldblood Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, Troopers Quarterly, and anthologies from Black Hare Press, Shacklebound, and Fairfield Scribes. He was a 2023 NESFA short story competition and 2024 Writers of the Future finalist, and is a first reader for Diabolical Plots and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores. A first-generation college graduate, Gideon emigrated from Scotland to New England, where he enjoys hiking the White Mountains with his sons.

For more information, visit Gideon’s blog at https://gideonpsmith.com/

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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 150 words in length that played off the phrase: “the off season.”

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“Planting” • by C. L. Sidell

“It’ll be the offseason soon,” Pop announces.

Badger’s Bend has one every thirteen years. Winter recedes in February and the ground thaws. Things we plant grow differently—taller, thicker, more nutritious.

“Behave yourself,” Mamma says when the time comes and they head for the gardens. “We’ll be home by sundown.”

Left unsupervised, I consider my favorite doll. “Maybe you can grow big too!” Grabbing a spade, I bury Janey behind the shed. “Sweet dreams,” I say, patting soil.

April arrives, blooming sumptuous edibles… and seven-foot-tall Janey, who bumbles around like a curious puppy. 

“Come here!” I shout, stomping feet.

Janey sniffs trees—

“Play with me!”

—tongues leaves, gnaws branches.

“It stays outside,” Mamma grumbles when Janey continues exploring, unfazed by commands.

I kick dirt while Janey tastes everything green. 

Later, my stomach drops as I see the moonlit doll wobbling toward our town’s gardens—dirty-blonde curls bouncing with single-minded purpose. 

________________________________________

A native Floridian, C. L. Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. Her work appears in The Cosmic Background, Dark Moments, Dread Machine, Factor Four Magazine, Impossible Worlds, Martian Magazine, Stupefying Stories, and others. Her most recent appearance in our virtual pages was “Release Me.”

You can find her on various social media platforms @sidellwrites

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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 150 words in length that played off the phrase: “the off season.”

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“Footprints” • by Robin Blasberg

The air still smelled of salt and the waves still crashed in rhythmic succession. But the boardwalk was empty and the beachgoers had all but disappeared.

It had been a long journey. Nothing had gone as planned, the trip itself having been one of last resort.  

Finally, he could have some peace now. He set out across the sand, leaving behind footprints that would soon be erased by the tide. He steeled himself against the chill of October. Invigorating, he told himself, before plunging into the water.

When he emerged, refreshed, he leaned back and let the ocean’s crisp caress soothe him while the gulls circling overhead provided a hypnotic diversion. Relaxing is what he called it.

But he was floating now without purpose. And as he felt himself being carried out to sea, he knew there would be no one to rescue him.  It was off season, after all.

________________________________________

You never know when you’ll find yourself adrift. Robin Blasberg has learned the hard way that you need to stay on your toes else you might not make it back to shore.

If you enjoyed this story, be sure to check out “The Night Parade” and “A Sweet Attraction,” also in Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE.

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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 150 words in length that played off the phrase: “the off season.”

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The Week in Review • 3 November 2024

Welcome to The Week in Review, our regularly scheduled Sunday wrap-up for those too busy to follow Stupefying Stories on a daily basis. With Halloween behind us we’ve transitioned from the horrible to the adorable, which just goes to show how little you know about little girls if you think there’s a difference. Why this photo today? Because it’s cute, and sweet, and seasonable, and it will give us a point of reference for next week, when we run a similar photo of a young boy holding a kitten. We have a bevy of those stock-art photos lined up—girl with puppy, boy with kitten, girl with kitten, etc., etc.—and working with Google and Amazon, we will be tracking your eye movements closely, to see which image best engages your attention when you look at this web page.

Unless, of course, you’ve put a Post-It note over the webcam in your laptop, or something like it over the selfie lens on your cell phone. Which will probably be illegal soon. If you have nothing to hide, why are you hiding?

What? You thought all the little A.I. daemons in your cell phone weren’t constantly looking at you, listening to you, monitoring your behavior, and sending that information straight to your A.I. overlord? Sigh. Such sweet naïveté. It would warm your A.I. overlord’s heart, if it had one.

Moving right along, then…

The Week in Review • 10/27/2024

Recapping: we began last week with what we called the week in review but was more realistically The Month in Review, with links to beaucoup stories, author profiles, and much commentary about the data gleaned from our taking a deep dive through our readership metrics. This deep dive was made necessary by our pulling together—

The Pete Wood Challenge Index

The complete (we think) list of every story we’ve published so far as part of The Pete Wood Challenge. There are more than 200 stories on this list, organized by the challenges that caused them to be written, so if you have some time to spare, you really should take a look at this index and see if any of the stories or authors strike your fancy.

Reminder #1: If you want to comment on a story, please do, but remember that comment moderation is in effect on older posts. Your comments won’t appear on the site until after they’ve been reviewed and approved. We’ve had to do this to control spam commenting, as once spambots find a story, they never give up. For example, Zoe Kaplan’s story, “Pink Marble,” was published back in March, but as of this morning it’s still drawing spam comments from companies trying to sell imported Mediterranean tiles and paving blocks. 

Reminder #2:  Pete Wood Challenge #35, “The Offseason,” rolls out tomorrow! All week long we’ll be running new stories daily. Watch for fresh flash fiction from Robin Blasberg, C. L. Sidell, Jeff Currier, Gideon Smith, Sophie Sparrow, Christopher Degni, Ted Macaluso, and even Pete Wood himself!

Reminder #3: it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the search function on this web site has become unreliable, as it now incorporates A.I. and sorts search results by “relevance.” For example, we’ve published a lot of stories by Christopher Degni in the past three years, but for some reason the search A.I. now thinks his story about a writer using A.I. to write a story, “A 125-word Story About Writer’s Block in the Style of Italo Calvino,” is relevant, but his story, “The Infinite and the Infinitesimal,” which is one of the most-read stories we’ve ever published on this site, is not.

The search function on this site uses the Google search engine. Remember this before you trust any search results or site rankings delivered by Google.

Back on topic. The Week in Review…

Looking Backward: Part 1

In which we take a deeper dive into the readership metrics, and serve up links to some good backlist stories you’ll probably never see if you trust Google’s search function.

Looking Backward: Part 2

In which we briefly revisit the earliest days of Stupefying Stories, take note of some problems that have been baked-in since Day One, and gently remind people that I do this not because I need to, but because I find it fun, and the day I stop finding this fun I’ll go do something else.

After which we serve up links to more good backlist stories that you’ll never see if you trust Google’s search function.

Speaking of links…

The Never-ending FAQ • 30 October 2024

A misnomer, as I never found time to answer any of the questions that have been piling up in my inbox. However, I did publish a pile of links to great Halloween-themed stories that you’ll probably never see if… you know where this is going.

LAST DAY! FREE E-BOOK GIVEAWAY ENDS AT MIDNIGHT!

Too late. You missed it. However, if you’re curious as to what you missed, click on through.

Six Questions for… Robert Lowell Russell

A quick profile of a genuinely funny writer who’s been with us since the earliest days, with links to stories of his that you’ll probably never see if…

Okay, enough dead horse abuse. But I’d genuinely forgotten how good “Best in Show” is. 

 

The Never-ending FAQ • 2 November 2024

In which I finally get the chance to start answering all those questions that have been piling up in my inbox. There are more questions waiting. I’ll answer those next week.

And that at last brings us up-to-date. Now, don’t forget!

Pete Wood Challenge #35, “The Offseason,” rolls out tomorrow! All week long we’ll be running new stories daily. Watch for fresh flash fiction from Robin Blasberg, C. L. Sidell, Jeff Currier, Gideon Smith, Sophie Sparrow, Christopher Degni, Ted Macaluso, and even Pete Wood himself!

And…

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The Never-ending FAQ • 2 November 2024

Now that we’ve passed Halloween and turned the corner through Fall on the way into Winter, it’s time to get back to all those questions that have been piling up in my inbox that I was too busy to answer last week. More questions are continuing to come in, so we’ll begin with the first one that was in my inbox this morning.

Q: How did the Stupefying Stories 26 free e-book giveaway turn out?

A: Better than I’d feared it would but not as well as I’d hoped it might. We moved quite a few copies, but only picked up one new rating and no new reviews.

We’ll probably do another free e-book giveaway in the last week of November, possibly of Stupefying Stories 24 but more likely of Stupefying Stories 23, and then take 23 out of print. We need to figure out a more aggressive strategy to promote these things before we do the next one, though.

Q: What’s going on with future books?

A: We’re going to try to get the next book out on December 1st. But before we do that, we need to figure out how to pre-sell the living Hell out of it before we release it! We need a much better marketing campaign. Trying to sell a book after it’s released doesn’t fly in today’s market. You’re trying to sell last week’s stale quantum doughnut against tomorrow’s hot and fresh new product. That doesn’t work.

Q: I thought you had the financial backing for four more books already lined up?

A: I do.

The funny part is, Stupefying Stories has never made a profit. Even in our best years, whenever we made what appeared to be a profit, I plowed everything we made back into publishing more content and paying our authors and artists more. Since we started publishing in 2010, in addition to our original seed capital and the reinvested profits, I’ve poured about $50,000 of my own money into promoting other authors’ works and careers.

When I was a project manager pulling down a six-figure salary, I didn’t worry too much about that. It was still less money that I’d have spent on a good sailboat, and had the added advantage of being fun year-round.

But now that I’m spending our investors’ money, I’ve become strangely parsimonious. I don’t want to waste their money on projects I only hope might produce good results.

Guess this explains why I’ve never wanted to run for Congress.

Q: Speaking of Congress and next week’s election—

A: Please, let’s not. I remember every election back through 1964, and this is the most vicious and polarized one I’ve ever seen. I just want to get through next Tuesday—or Wednesday—or whenever it is that they finally agree on what the results are—and get back to something that approximates “normal,” if that’s possible.

Q: 1964? Just how old are you?

A: Old enough to have seen The Doors play live. Correlate that.

Q: Speaking of music: you haven’t posted anything lately about your Eurorack project. How’s that coming along? 

A: My unholy creation is sitting up and taking nourishment. I still have another half-dozen or so modules on backorder. I have the rack-space for them, I just don’t have them yet.

[Music cue: Tin Huey, “I Could Rule The World, If I Could Only Get The Parts”]

I am slightly disappointed by the Behringer 1047. The original ARP 1047 Multimode Filter/Resonator was the module that really gave the 2500 its distinctive character. Behringer got the sound about right, but to make it fit in a 16HP Eurorack module they left off a few inputs. I can work around the limitations of the single audio input—that just requires an outboard mixer, and hey, it’s Eurorack! Need space for more modules? Add another chassis! It doesn’t need to fit into a 2500 cabinet, where module space is at a premium!

But the minimalist number of CV inputs is a problem, especially the lack of a scaled 1V/8va KBD CV input. I’m still working on figuring out a workaround for that, so that I can get the filter to track the keyboard or the sequencer consistently and accurately.

Uh-oh. I sense a great disturbance in the force, as if there are the many eyeballs glazing over out there. Better get on with the next question.

Q: I’ve been reading your editorials, and it sounds like you may stop publishing short fiction and The Pete Wood Challenge altogether. I’ll be sad if this happens, but will understand. Is this true?

A: Not exactly. Pete Wood Challenge #35, “The Off-Season,” starts running on Monday, November 4th, and new stories run all through next week. We even have a new Pete Wood story for you. (Sometimes Pete can’t resist writing a story for his own challenge, even though he’s not allowed to declare himself the winner.)

We have more SHOWCASE stories in the queue and waiting to run, and will continue to run them through November. But we’re just not getting the level of reader support we need to publish new stories daily, so we need to cut back on how many free stories we run on the web site, at least until such time as that condition changes. Essentially, I’m having to ration out the stories we have.

As I said, now that I’m spending our investors’ cash, I’m being a lot more careful with it and trying to stretch it as far as possible.

As I’ve also said, Stupefying Stories magazine is the challenge. Our original novels sell. Selling the magazine is like trying to push overcooked spaghetti uphill against the wind. Until we figure out what’s wrong with our marketing and how to fix it—if it can be fixed—

You get the picture.

Q: Will there ever be print editions of SS#24 and SS#26?

A: Yes. We’d planned to finish those and get them uploaded this week, then found some of the source files were not where we believed them to be. We have everything in hand now and expect to finish up the print books next week.

Q: How exactly do you do your print books?

A: At present, we use Vellum to do our layouts. We do novels through Ingram Spark, because they produce a better quality (but more expensive) book, but we do the magazine through Amazon KDP, because it’s faster and cheaper. By doing the novels through Ingram Spark we also get the capacity to sell printed books through bookstores, although in practice that’s more hypothetical than actual. 

Q: Thanks for publishing the Pete Wood Challenge index. I’ve been reading old stories and have tried to comment on some of them, but my comments don’t seem to be going through. Do you moderate comments?

A: Yes and no. Past a certain date, comments are automatically put in the moderation queue and must be approved before they’re posted. We’ve had to do this because of the spambots. It seems to take them a few weeks to find a newly posted story, but once they find one, they never let go. For example, Zoe Kaplan’s story, “Pink Marble,” continues to collect spam comments from companies trying to sell imported Mediterranean tiles and paving blocks.

If you’ve looked at the original SHOWCASE site, spambots are what eventually made the bulletin board, reader’s forum, and feedback email addresses useless. We were spending more time moderating spam comments than publishing fiction. We’ve tried Akismet and other filters, but it’s a never-ending battle against the spambots, and one that keeps escalating.

Q: Why do you allow anonymous comments?

A: They enable us to receive useful feedback from people who don’t have a Google/Gmail login.

Then again, sometimes we get feedback from people who have a negative opinion but are too cowardly to stand behind it. Such comments usually reveal more about the personal problems of the person making the comment than anything useful to us.

We do not delete obnoxious comments—unless they’re directed at one of the other guests on our site. Then we drop the 8-lb banhammer on them without hesitation. 

Q: You’ve been posting a lot of retrospective content lately. Why?

A: Sometimes you need to know where you’ve been to figure out where you want to go. We’ve had a multitude of web sites over the years, and there’s a ton of old content out there. It’s been strongly recommended to us that we move to a new site in 2025 and put our premium content behind a paywall. Part of what’s held us back from doing so was the sheer mass of old content we have on our existing site.

But if no one is reading any of that old stuff anyway…

Q: In Six Questions for… Robert Russell Lowell, you hinted that you’re planning a reprint anthology?

A: Yes. Several. That’s the other reason why we’re delving into the old content: to identify stories we’d like to collect in reprint anthologies.

The third reason is that I’ve received some invitations to write about writing for other publications, and am trying to figure out just what I have out there that might be salvageable and repurposable for that. I do know how to write fiction, and how to teach others how to do so.

I just don’t have a clue how to market fiction successfully, in a world where the rules for doing so seem to be changing daily.

Q: A few weeks ago you published a really charming picture of a mist-covered pasture. Was that done with A.I.? 

A: Nope. That was just a matter of being in the right place, looking in the right direction, at the right time, and having a camera handy.  

The ironic part is that a few days ago I was again in that place, at that relative time (a few minutes before sunrise), looking in the same direction, only this time the pasture was covered with white hoarfrost…

But in the meantime, my cell phone had downloaded and installed new camera software with all sorts of A.I. enhancements, and when I tried to frame up the same shot, the A.I. recognized the scene and insisted on trying to change the color balance so that the frost-covered white grass was a proper green. By the time I figured out how to shut off the A.I. enhancements, it was too late. Dawn had broken; the light had changed; the frost was beginning to melt.

The moment was gone.     

 

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Six Questions for… Robert Lowell Russell

Robert Lowell Russell (a.k.a. Rob, Dad, that weird dude) lives with his family in southeastern Ohio. He’s a former cardiac nurse, and currently manages continuing education events for nurses and osteopathic physicians. He’s had more than fifty short stories published over the years, and we’re pleased to have published a number of them.

Rob’s first appearance in our pages was one of the funniest stories we’ve ever published, “Elves Are Douchebags,” which you’ll find for a little while longer on the original SHOWCASE web site. Read it now. He followed that up with “Here There Be Monsters?” the story that put “reptile dysfunction” into our vocabulary and introduced us to, well…

“We’re experimenting with meta-bullying,” a girl explained. “We think if we plant certain words often enough in the media, people will be afraid without even really knowing why.”     

Brilliantly prescient, I think.

In last week’s deep dive through our old archives I found another of his stories, “Best in Show,” on our short-lived and unlamented “crevasse” site, so named because it was all pale blue and white, and stories fell into it, never to be seen again. If you like stories about cats, and especially stories about cats behaving very badly, you really need to read Rob’s play-by-play of the 2028 CFA World Cat Spectacular competition. Read it now. 

In 2017 Rob got the cover of Stupefying Stories 16 with “I Live the Warrior’s Life,” a truly badass piece of contemporary fantasy that proved he wasn’t just a humorous writer. Sadly, SS16 is out of print now, but this story is on the shortlist for Stupefying Stories Presents: Heroes, a reprint anthology we’re hoping to get out in Q2 2025. 

Most recently, Rob’s story, “Days of Love and Loss: A Prologue to the Cat-borg Apocalypse,” capped off Stupefying Stories 24, and if you haven’t read it yet, you’re missing a real treat. Stupefying Stories 24 is free on Kindle Unlimited, so if you have a KU subscription, you owe it to yourself to check it out. 

With all this as history, this seemed like a good time to catch up with Rob and see how he’s doing. Here we go!

§

SS: What is the first SF/F book or story you remember reading?

RLR: My first exposure to speculative fiction was when my mom read The Hobbit to me and my younger brother. Later, when I was in the second grade, she started reading The Chronicles of Narnia to me, but I got impatient with her pace and started reading the series on my own. I haven’t stopped reading since. Thanks mom!

SS: Who was your most significant influence? 

RLR: By far, the biggest influence on my writing has been Glen Cook, particularly his Black Company and Garret P.I. series. I enjoyed Cook’s first-person narratives as well as his humor. I emulated his style when I was first starting out, and I’ve frequently adapted my own humor into my writing.

SS: When you write a new story, are you a plotter or a pantser? 

RLR: I’ve always been a pantser when it comes to writing short stories because I can usually keep all the story elements in my head and get them down intact. However, trying to be a pantser with some of the novels I’ve started has gone… poorly.

SS: If you could change one thing about the way you write, what would it be? 

RLR: I’d like to be able to blast out a novel and not worry about its quality before making revisions, but I tend to revise as I go, leaving the first parts of my projects polished, and the latter parts a jumbled, unfinished mess.

SS: How do you balance writing vs having a life? 

RLR: I wrote most of my short stories while I was going to nursing school. I found that I could squeeze out a new short story between my studies and exams as a way of taking a break. Now that I’m working full-time (though thankfully without the crazy hours and crazier patients, in my current role), I find it harder to write new things and not have it feel like extra work. I guess I’m still figuring out that whole writing/life balance thing.

SS: What's next for you? What are you working on now? 

RLR: My fiction writing has tapered off considerably over the last few years. I have a half-finished, middle school-level humorous novel I’ve been sitting on for years now. I’d like to actually finish it (after doing some necessary plotting instead of trying to pants it) and then run it by the writers group that was so helpful to me when I first started writing. If that plan works out, I’d like to see if I can get my first novel published. It’s all fame and fortune after that, right?

§

While we’re struggling not to die laughing at that last sentence, you should take a moment right now to check out Stupefying Stories 24. SS24 features:

• Pete Wood - "Birds of a Feather"
• Beth Cato - "Monsters of the Place Between"
• Andrew Jensen - "Running Away with the Cirque"
• Avery Elizabeth Hurt - "Sanctuary"
• Mike Adamson - "Last Stop Paradise"
• Carol Scheina - "The Burning Skies Bring His Soul"
• Phllip C. Jennings - "Mother's Day"
• Jamie Lackey - "The Gentlepeople"
• Karl Dandenell - "Krishna's Gift"
• Robert Lowell Russell - "Days of Love and Loss: A Prologue to the Cat-borg Apocalypse"

 Get it today!

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