Fictional Worlds

Just Like The Speeding Heart by Osahon Ize-Iyamu It’s seven A.M. and you’re making akara and tea, just for yourself and not for the two of us. You ask if it’s time, and it is, but I won’t tell you that. Let you be silent and make your tea and not speak. Let you be […]

Straw Spun by Leah Cypess ‭Alina unfolded the letter slowly and with great care:‭ ‬it was very old,‭ ‬and‭ ‬felt thin and fragile under her steady fingertips.‭ ‬Her heart was pounding in a way unfamiliar to her,‭ ‬and not just because of the whispers she had heard on the way to the throne room:‭ ‬gold […]

The Young Adult Fiction Podcast

This is not your father's time travel. There's no machine, there is no dial. There's no telling where or when you'll go. The only thing that can change is you. It will make you what it needs to make you, to fit you in, to make it work. And when you come back, that is if you come back, it won't be the same you at all. You're messing with the nature of things, and the nature of things does not like to be messed with, as Garrett Ronson and his friends find out, the hard way.

Seven Kinds of Baked Goods by Maria Haskins.  Narrated by J.S. Arquin.  #Fantasy #Fiction #Podcast #Poison #Assassins #Dwarves #Blades   "The smell of mold and winter-stored potatoes chokes me as I dangle across the high-cantled saddle; the coarse fabric of the sack chafing my face and hands, the rag stuffed in my mouth ensuring I can't even complain about the bumping and bruising.      Yet even now, even here, I wouldn't change a thing about the life I've lived, if the chance were given.  After all, it has to count for something that I'm the only Dwarven crafter ever to cause more deaths with flaky pastry than a well-honed blade."   Maria Haskins is a Swedish-Canadian writer and translator.  She writes speculative fiction and poetry, and lives just outside Vancouver with a husband, two kids, and a very large black dog.  Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Online, Shimmer, Cast of Wonders, and elsewhere.  Find her online at .   Please help support The Overcast.  Subscribe on or so you never miss an episode.  Don't forget to leave a review while you're there!