November: Faith and Fear

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Our host this month is Michelle Murrain, bringing you tales of Faith and Fear from readers Gail Z. Martin, Larissa Niec and Roberta Gregory.

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October Brings Spooky Treats

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This month's Broadly Speaking features two lovely broads with some spooky treats for readers and writers alike. Author K.A. Laity announces some of her new releases including a dark fiction collection; author and illustrator Vonnie Winslow Crist offers some wonderful advice for authors about Thinking Outside the Dark Fantasy box beyond the usual vampires, zombies and werewolves.

Join your host Rae Lori for this very haunting episode of Broadly Speaking

October 2012: Unnatural and Undead

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Hello and welcome to the October 2012 episode of the Broad Pod, "Unnatural and Undead", just in time for the spookiest month of the year. The Broad Pod is sponsored by the Broad Universe and features some of speculative fiction's shining authors.  Your host this month is Rae Lori, multi-genre author, artist and voracious book lover, showcasing wonderful reads delivered right to your speakers. This month we have readings from:

- Gail Z. Martin, whose story, "The Dread",  features a necromancer fighting the animated corpse gatekeeper of the realm of the undead against the Scavenger of Souls
- Vonnie Winslow Crist with an excerpt from The Return of Gunnar Kettilson
- LC Hu reads from her short story, Lump
- Shauna Roberts shares a teaser from her short story, "The Making of a Man", a mashup of historical fiction, science fiction, and zombie horror
- E. F. Watkins reads and excerpt from Dance With the Dragon.
 
So kick up your feet, grab your favorite treats and drinks and take a listen. You may discover some new and great reads to add to your bookshelf!

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Howling About Animals in Science Fiction and Fantasy

From 

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the Dragonriders of Pern to the tales of Redwall, Science Fiction and Fantasy is filled with animal characters. For the September episode of Broadly Speaking, four authors known for their work with animals in fiction joined host Tracy S. Morris to discuss the perils and successes of using animals as characters in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

 

Carole Nelson Douglas is the author of the Midnight Louie detective novels, which are told from the perspective of a cat who thinks he is Sam Spade.

You can find her at http://carolenelsondouglas.com/

 

Dusty Rainbolt is the vice president for the Cat Writers’ Association, Inc. In addition to writing informative books and articles on cats including Kittens for Dummies, she is the author of several novels with animal characters that include cats that fetch and a Madagascar hissing cockroach. You can find Dusty online at http://www.dustycatwriter.com

 

Bev Hale is the author of The Essense of Stone, in which a sorcerer’s apprentice must deal with a princess who has been turned into a cat. She also creates Steampunk art and jewelry through her company Otherwhen Oddities. You can find her at http://www.bevhale.com/

 

Maggie Bonham is the author of over 28 books on dog training and pet care as well as epic science fiction and fantasy. She is also the publisher of Skywarrior Books. You can find her on the web at http://www.shadowhelm.net/  You can find Skywarrior books at http://www.skywarriorbooks.com/

 

Tracy S. Morris is the author of the Tranquility Mysteries, as series of urban fantasy mysteries in rural settings. One of the characters of her series is a vet who can speak to animals. Her pet ferrets are frequently in the middle of the mysteries, but because they are ferrets, they are too busy stealing keys and socks to pay attention to who the killer might be. You can find her on the web at http://www.tracysmorris.com

September 2012: Animals and Nature

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Greetings and welcome to the September edition of the BroadPod with your host, Justine Graykin, writer and free-lance philosopher.   As we slide from the lazy abundance of summer towards  the transformations of autumn's chill, we offer for your listening pleasure stories of the natural world and those closest to it, our animal kin.

The colors of flowers take on a life beyond life in the work of our first reader, Anne E. Johnson.  'Beyond Rainbow', is a speculative flash story about physical nature being expanded by or blurred into the metaphysical. The result is transformational, both in the destructive and the creative sense. It is also never-ending.

Nancy Jane Moore's chilling gem, "The Dog at the End of the World," was originally inspired when she heard that school children should be taught not to begin a story with "I have a dog." But it is not a dog story that most children would write.

Vonnie Winslow Crist reads an excerpt from "On A Midwinter's Eve," the first story in her book, "Owl Light." It's a dark tale of magic and Faerie about a hunter who stumbles across a blue-faced woman and her animals at twilight in the dead of winter.

Last in the line-up, a breath-taking battle between two horses, one brave and mortal, one fearful and fey, as Trisha Wooldridge shares a tempting teaser from her upcoming release, "Kelpie", from Spencer Hill Press.

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Exploring Beyond the Borders: Breaking the Conventions of Genre in SF/F/H

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Are the boundaries that define genre fiction constructs of publishers’ marketing departments?  Created by readers’ demands?  Or reflections of important storytelling traditions?  What happens when writers and readers travel to the dangerous and exciting spaces in-between?  As changes in publishing and social media offer more options for the ways in which stories are told and consumed, what will the next generation of SF/F literature look like?

Larissa N. Niec is author of The Sky Seekers novels Shorn (Mercury Retrograde Press, 2008) and Cael’s Shadow (Mercury Retrograde Press, May 2013). Currently, she serves as president for the Board of the Interstitial Arts Foundation. In addition to her work in the world of art and literature, Larissa is a clinical child psychologist, a professor of psychology and the director of the Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Clinic and Research Center in the middle of Michigan. Although her writing may not always be interstitial, Larissa is herself an interstitial writer living in the fertile borderlands between academia and fiction, psychology and fantasy. Find Larissa online at www.LarissaNiec.com.

Julia Rios writes, hosts the Outer Alliance Podcast (celebrating QUILTBAG speculative fiction), and is part of the fiction editing team at Strange Horizons. She's half-Mexican, but her (fairly dreadful) French is better than her Spanish. Visit her online at www.juliarios.com.

Catherine Lundoff is the award-winning author of Silver Moon: A Women of Wolf’s Point Novel (Lethe Press, 2012) as well as the short story collections Night’s Kiss (Lethe Press, 2009), Crave (Lethe Press, 2007) and A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace and Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2011). She is the editor of Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories (Lethe Press, 2008) and the co-editor, with JoSelle Vanderhooft, of the anthology Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic (Lethe Press, 2011). In her other lives, she's a professional computer geek, the spouse of her fabulous wife and an occasional teacher of writing classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Website: www.catherinelundoff.com

Kristen McDermott is a Professor of English Literature at Central Michigan University, specializing in Early Modern Drama and Theater History. She has dedicated her teaching to bridging the gap between scholarly research and an appreciation for the living arts of drama, music, and storytelling. Dr. McDermott is the co-author, with her husband, Prof. Ari Berk, of an interactive book for young readers, The Life and Times of William Shakespeare (Templar Books 2010), and the editor of Masques of Difference: Four Court Masques by Ben Jonson (Manchester University Press, 2007). She has published articles on Early Modern Drama in the G.K. Hall anthology Critical Essays on Ben Jonson, Early Theatre, Renaissance Papers, Shakespeare Magazine, and The Language Arts Journal of Michigan. She has also written a series of articles on drama, fantasy literature, and folk traditions for Realms of Fantasy Magazine, and served on the Board of the Interstitial Arts Foundation from 2006-2008.

 

August 2012: Humor

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Thanks to heroic efforts on the part of everyone involved, our Humor podcast for August is up in spite of ill-timed vacations, technical snafus, power outages, exploding bathrooms, misdirected megafiles and demon attacks.  Host T.W. Fendley, author of the historical fantasy, Zero Time, proudly presents this month's readers:

Justine Graykin, with an excerpt from Archimedes Nesselrode, a whimsical novel written for adults who have grown weary of “adult” books, soon to be released as an eBook from Double Dragon Publishing.

Karina Fabian’s dragon, Vern, has a penchant for puns and snide remarks as well as a knack for getting himself into ridiculous situations.  No wonder her DragonEye novels come with reader warnings to not read while eating or drinking or in public where you’re worried about embarrassing yourself by laughing out loud. Live and Let Fly is her second DragonEye novel. http://fabianspace.com

Ann Wilkes will read an excerpt from a new installment in the Awesome Lavratt Universe that is, as yet, untitled. The Awesome Lavratt is currently out of print, but stories in two Dark Quest Anthologies are still available.

Tracy S. Morris will read from "The Plays The Thing," a short story she co-wrote with Brad Sinor for the Grantville Gazette. In it, a time-traveling reporter helps Cyrano de Bergerac write an infamous play while trying to outwit an unwanted suitor.

Pour yourself a cold one, sit back, and have a chuckle on us.

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