Poser Alert

He's a little devil...

Vol. 4 - ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ

this is the end, beautiful friend

of our elastic band, the end

you'll never understand, the end

I'm fondling my gland,

again

Ignore that last bit, it's not part of the original song. I keep telling Jim to shut up, he's dead, but he just can't leave things alone.

So this is it. With this last batch of stories, I'm closing the doors. Ha! Get it? Closing the doors.

Anyway, the boss has finally given me permission to pursue my dream of opening a high-end women's boutique for high-end women. I'll leave the stories up for a year or so, in case anybody wants to nominate one for a Nebula or Hugo or something like that.

And so at this, the very end of all things, we bring you four stories about the circle of life, death and torment. An el grande taco tour of several hells, ending with glimpse of hope for the future.

Working for the Man by Daria Patrie
North by Ward Crockett
The Journey by Tirumal Mundargi
A New Heaven and a New Earth by Carrie Laben

Duece

A clap of thunder and a blast of sulfurous lightning greet the arrival of two more stories to our hellish domain - a pair of zombie stories to satisfy those late-night cravings for a glass of warm milky eyes:

Gord Sellar's ER drama "Dyscrasia" and David Snyder's devilish "Zombies Versus Dinosaurs."

Gord Sellar is a Canadian graduate of Clarion West who was born in Malawi and has lived in South Korea since 2002. (He still plans to finish his circumhabitation of the globe someday, but no time soon.) He is a columnist for the Canadian women's magazine Cahoots, and he has stories forthcoming in Fantasy magazine and Nature's "Futures" fiction column. He currently lives in Bucheon, South Korea with his fiancee, upon whose misadventures as a medical intern this story was loosely based, and is currently working on a novel about Northeast-Asian superheroes. You can find him online at gordsellar.com.

David J. Snyder's genre fiction has appeared in the Philadelphia City Paper and the anthology Path of the Bold. His so-called literary fiction has been published in journals such as Fiction and Potomac Review, and his short plays have been performed by the Cardboard Box Collaborative and Delaware's City Theater Company. David lives outside of Philadelphia with his wife Melissa, who had the dream which inspired this story.

The art order for "Zombies Versus Dinosaurs" needs no ellaboration. Just go with it.
For "Dyscrasia" I'd like to see something to do with an Emergency Room, emergency treatment, medical devices, a flatlined heart monitor, or something like that. Click here for the full list of our art needs.

I'm still agonizing over the last two stories. I have three, one of which I must regretfull consign to the Lake of Fire.

Special Deal on e-Cards

I know many of you are a little leary of shelling out the big bucks for a subscription to Postcards from Hell. It is, after all, a brand new publication, and there isn't a single story by Ramsey Campbell on the menu. You might even be superstitious about spending $6.66. Hey, I can understand that. I used to work at 7-11. I've seen just about everything.

So I'm offering a special deal on e-Cards. Say you order an e-Card subscription for $3.33, and after the first three or four e-Cards you say to yourself, damn these are good stories, I wish I'd gone ahead and ordered the print version.

Well now you can. At any point in the series you can switch your e-Card subscription to a Postcard subscription at a prorated rate of .26-cents per remaining story (for U.S. subscriptions), with a $1.00 minimum order. Thanks to the new US Postal rates, it's a bit more for subcriptions outside the United States.

If you would like to upgrade your e-Card subscription to a Postcard subscription, send me a note to postcards(dot)fromhell(at)gmail(dot)com and I'll prorate your subscription and tell you where to address the money through Paypal.

The New Phone Book's Here!

A nice write-up about postcard fiction in Dark Scribe magazine. But I'm not sure who this Jeff Crook guy is. Probably an imposter. We'll deal with him later.

Meanwhile, keep visiting our sponsors. So far, you've clicked enough to buy two more stories. That's a good thing.

Of Stories and Submissions

Thanks to everyone who has dared the Lake of Fire to bring their stories to the attention of our tormented readers. The old lake is burning merrily with all the stories we've fed into it's flames over the last couple of weeks - well over a hundred, but who's counting? The screams are what makes this job worth getting out of the bed of nails.

Note to Manuel in Puerto Rico and CC-S in London: Email to your address is bouncing. Please be advised, your story has been consigned to the Lake of Fire.

Now that the number of submissions has begun to level off, I think it's safe to assume everyone has gone through all their trunk stories.

To everyone who has submitted without reading the guidelines except to find the submission address, please don't think I haven't noticed. You would also do well to read Things to Consider, Things to Avoid.

Also please pay attention to the word count restrictions. Although I haven't had to reject a story because it was too long, most of the stories that I have received are over 500 words, with an unhealthy percentage of those pushing the 600 word mark. If your story is 597 words long, it already has a strike against it.

All that said, I do have quite a large folder of stories that I plan to grant further consideration. If you have submitted a story and haven't heard back from me in about 5 days, your story is in my Read Again file and it could be a month or two before I reply to it.

They say punishment delayed in the worst punishment of all. Meanwhile, try the veal.

Mieluinen jotta Helvetti

Let's all give a warm welcome to Hannu Rajaniemi and his story, "Satan's Typist" - the latest story added to the menu of The First 13.

Hannu Rajaniemi is originally from Finland, but went to Scotland to get away from polar bears and Nokia recruiters. He has a PhD in string theory, but now claims to be a technology entrepreneur. His fiction has been featured in futurismic.com, the Finnish magazines Usva and Portti, Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction edited by Andrew J. Wilson and Neil Williamson, Year's Best SF 11 and The Best New SF 23. He is currently working on a novel. Hannu is also an active member of Writers' Bloc, an Edinburgh-based spoken word group.

If I screwed up the greeting in the title to this post, blame the online translation software from hell.

Curiously, Andrew Ferguson ("The Cabinet of Dr. Calamari") is also a member of Writer's Bloc. There must be something in the water in Edinburgh other than coal dust.

It's a small hell after all.
It's a small hell after all.
It's a small hell after all.
It's a small small hell.

Praying Won't Do You No Good

If you subscribed and are not receiving your postcards, you must let me know - either by email or in comments to this post.

Otherwise, I have no way of knowing that you aren't getting them until the post office decides to return them, which takes weeks, and by that time you've already missed out on half the stories. Postage eats up nearly half the price of your subscription, so mailing postcards to your bad address is like throwing money in the lake of fire, something we don't like to do around here since it REALLY pisses off Mammon, the Demon Lord of Accounts Payable.

Wish You Were Here

Would you like to receive email notification whenever a new postcard is published?

Then sign up for the Postcards From... newsletter by sending an email to postcards[dot]fromhell[at]gmail[dot]com with Sign Me Up for My Subcutaneous Tracking Chip! as the subject. Or not. Just send me an email and I'll sign you up.

What else do you get when you sign up? Who knows. Maybe a preview of stories in the cue? Sweet nothings whispered in your virtual ear? Photos of naked demons and nude moon maidens?

Probably not the last one, but you get the idea.

What you won't get is spam. Here's our privacy policy. It's one sentence long. Your email address will be used to notify you of new stories published at Postcards From... and nothing else. Period.

Ok, that's two sentences. Sort of. But you get the idea. Here's the email address again:

postcards[dot]fromhell[at]gmail[dot]com : Subject= Sign Me Up for My Subcutaneous Tracking Chip!

Vol.2 - Postcards from the Woody End

This is it, our first true issue of Postcards, appropriately titled Volume 2.

In addition to the new look, we've gone to a regular publication schedule. We'll publish a new volume every other month, for six total issues per year. The stories will dictate the content of each issue; some will be dedicate to a single genre, others will be a mix of genres.

In this first issue, we happen to have four tales of fantasy, and an eclectic mix it is - everything from not-so-traditional traditional fantasy, to modern fantasy, to futuristic horror fantasy, to Kafka-esque surrealism. Enjoy!

Breaking Fast with Hildebrand by Gwendolyn Clare
Blind Spot by Nadia Bulkin
For Rent by Jennifer Greylyn
Two Drawers Down from the Butcher Block by D. Thomas Minton