Far Fetched Fables No. 49 Kristi Charish and Jessica May Lin

Flash Fiction: “Dark, Beautiful Force” by Jessica May Lin

I met you the summer I was nineteen. You were a shadow on the wall, tall and intimidating in a way I could never be, and you were all that stood between my first supervillain and me.

You grinned and leapt down in your black domino mask and high-top sneakers, before I even stepped past the mouth of the alley.

I hated you, because you knocked the villain out before I could, and smirked at me over the popped collar of your leather jacket as you handcuffed him.

They printed our pictures in the newspaper side by side. You, in your leather and your sneakers. Me, in my thigh-high boots and red latex skirt. The new superstars on the block.
But I was jealous and told our mentors that your superhero name made me think of candy bars, your costume of freeze-dried bats.
We kept running into each other.

Jessica May Lin is a student at the University of California, Berkeley, where she lives with a giant stuffed sushi and spends absurd hours of the night writing. She also pole dances (the acrobatic variety). Jessica graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop 2012, and her fiction also will appear in Nature. More details can be found at jessicamaylin.com.

Main Story: “Canadian Blood Diamonds” by Kristi Charish

Have you ever wanted to kill your minions?No, seriously. Have you ever had the urge to grab them by the neck and inject some really nasty nanobot that will eat them from the inside out? Cause that’s about where I was last night at three a.m., standing outside my generator shed in worn, pink bunny slippers, up to my ankles in freezing snow. I sipped my coffee and took in the two shot rotator belts covered in icicles — on the nuclear generator I bought last week for over a million dollars.“Fuck me,” I said. It was so damn cold I half expected my breath to form icicles. “So let me get this straight. The heat’s off, the lights are out, and my diamond mine is offline. All because you two morons cheaped out on insulator?” I rubbed my forehead with the sleeve of my pink bunny bathrobe.Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee shuffled their feet before Tweedle Dum spoke up. “Well, boss, when you say it like that – “

Kristi Charish is the author of Owl and the Japanese Circus (Simon and Schuster Canada/Pocket Books), an urban fantasy about a modern-day “Indiana Jane” who reluctantly navigates the hidden supernatural world. She writes what she loves; adventure heavy stories featuring strong, savvy female protagonists, pop culture, and the occasional RPG fantasy game thrown in the mix. The second installment,Owl and the City of Angels, is scheduled for release in January 2016. Her second urban fantasy series, Kincaid Strange (Random House Canada), about a voodoo practitioner living in Seattle, is scheduled for release mid 2016.

Kristi is also a scientist with a BSc and MSc in Molecular Biology and Biochemistryfrom Simon Fraser University, and a PhD in Zoology from the University of British Columbia. Her specialties are genetics, cell biology, and molecular biology, all of which she draws upon in her writing. She is represented by Carolyn Forde at Westwood Creative Artists.

About the Narrators:

Sarah Frederickson was born in Oregon in the United States, and was raised in beautiful Minnesota. At a young age she realized her passion for musical performance and the creative arts. Sarah spent most of her childhood singing and acting – both onstage and off – and affecting various accents for fun.

She soon found herself competing in local, state and national forensics competitions (that’s competitive speaking). Her experience and awards landed her a forensics scholarship to Bethel University in St.Paul Minnesota, where she continued to compete as well as train other speakers at the collegiate level. Sarah graduated with a degree in Music business and Audio Production. Shortly after graduation she traveled to Australia for a one-year holiday. During that time she became smitten with an Australian man who asked her to stay, and four years later the couple live and work in Australia, going on adventures, writing music and reading stories to their cat.

[D’oh! Due to the chaos of completing this week’s episode, we inadvertently failed to properly credit Sarah for reading “Dark, Beautiful Force”. in this week’s recording. We regret the error.]

Nikolle Doolin is a writer and a voice actor. Her fiction, poetry, and plays have been published and performed; and her voice has appeared in various mediums, including a number of popular and award-winning podcasts. Nikolle has narrated horror, fantasy, crime, and science fiction for Tales to Terrify, The NoSleep Podcast, StarShipSofa, and Crime City Central. You can also listen to Nikolle narrate classic literature in her podcast Audio Literature Odyssey. To learn more about Nikolle, visit her website at nikolledoolin.com.

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