Humdrum Places - BlogFlock

Some ordinary results (year ii) - foofaraw

2026-10-03T20:22:46.000Z

Entries received 76

Longlist finalists 15 stories

Honorable mentions 5 writers $10 entry fee returned

Total prizes $555 paid to the three winners

Welcome! Another year; another contest; another set of (extra)ordinary results.

Before we get into things, I want to give a ginormous gallon of gratitude to our amazing judges: Andrea Cavedo, Ashlee Lhamon, and Jenifer Reynolds. I've been absolutely honored to have them as judges—and friends—this year.

And of course, this wouldn't be possible without all the wonderful writers who took a chance on our second contest and signed up to participate. While we only take a small cut of the entry fees, it's essentially one of the few ways we raise money to help publish the wonderful stories, poems, columns, and cartoons throughout the year.

Congratulations to all who made the longlist, our five honorable mentions, and of course, our three winners who will be published in November's issue.

Without further ado...

Longlist

Lick by Anthea Jones
New Management at the Western Trails Motel by Jonathan Tolstedt
Overheard by SPQM
Slam Click by Meriwether Falk
Stitches of Time by Leow Jinn Jyh
The Memory Thief by Angela Benham
The Scritching by Sam James

Honorable mentions

$10 entry fee returned · listed alphabetically

Ellen’s Final Foster Child by Jane Stecyk
Left Door, Right Door by Kat Albrecht
Rubis by Corrie Haldane
The Fun is in the Searching by David K. Mitchell
The Yolk’s On You by Moira Richardson

Winners

Third place

Frayed Threads

by Ren Crewell-Fuerst

$110 · published in Foofaraw Press

Second place

A Cold Day in Hell and Other Graveyard Shift Problems

by JA Logwood

$165 · published in Foofaraw Press

First place

Beyond Anywhere

by MM Schreier

$280 · published in Foofaraw Press

Also in this series

Story — First place Beyond Anywhere by MM Schreier Coming Nov 16 Story — Second place A Cold Day in Hell and Other Graveyard Shift Problems by JA Logwood Coming Nov 9 Story — Third place Frayed Threads by Ren Crewell-Fuerst Coming Nov 2 Year II announcement An Ordinary Contest — Year II Year I results An Ordinary Contest results — Year I Year I Winner A Cup to Save the World by Andrea Cavedo

Have Hands, Will Hench - foofaraw

2026-10-03T12:00:10.000Z

Our fourth novelette is live! Snag a copy directly from us now or anywhere books are sold.

In a world... ravaged by global warming and wars, Banana Brian is forced to take a job as a supervillain's henchman to pay off his student loans. In order to survive, Brian must find a way to pay off his giant debt, avoid kleptomaniac henchmen, find shortcuts to freedom, and avoid getting killed by rampaging amoral superheroes, the supervillain's brutal enforcers, and a nasty infection he got from a cut...

Foofaraw[+] subscribers receive a free ebook copy, and upgraded Patrons of Foofaraw should have a paperback edition arriving in the mailbox shortly. Upgrade in the next month to be eligible.

It is available everywhere books are sold online including Weightless, Bookshop, and all the big guys if that's your choice of poison.

Foofaraw Press Store

Books, ebooks, and limited editions from Foofaraw Press.

Digital copy for paid subscribers

So, You Want to be an AI Slopper - foofaraw

2026-10-03T01:57:36.000Z

You want glory and riches and fame and book signings and an HBO adaptation and Hollywood parties and piles of cocaine and then groupies and threesomes and orgies and more, so much more! Maybe a couple of statues and the Nobel prize and all of the trophies and medals and the bestseller status and a book tour and red carpets and people chanting your name at the top of their lungs and glory⁠—oh, how you yearn for that glory.

There’s only one problem: you’re expected to sit down and write and rewrite and then edit and chisel and, like, try to put in actual effort⁠—who has the time? Nerd shit. There must be a shortcut.

And sure, maybe you even got one of those books about writing by Le Guin, King, or Bradbury, but it was so dense, had no pictures, and made your head hurt, so you threw it away. Stupid books.

Your next step, of course, is to get your big manuscript⁠—nay, your great magnum opus, your gift to humanity!⁠—done the fast way, with AI. And yeah, sure, some people despise it, but that’s because they’re haters and losers and Luddites. (You’re not really sure what that last word means, but it sounds so retro and cool and you heard it on your favorite podcast.)

So you fire up a chatbot and feed it your Great Big Idea or, you know what, why even bother, just tell it to make something up for you. Ideas, pfft, who even has them these days, am I right? Nah, let the robot take care of it. There! It’s a huge outline with characters, concepts, and all that good stuff, but again, with no pictures. Your eyes start to glaze over and you can just barely make out the bit where the bot praises your creativity. After a quick pat on the back, you acknowledge that part with a nod and a smile, something you tell yourself you’re going to practice in front of a mirror for all of your future interviews.

You give the bot the go-ahead, commanding it to turn that concept into a novel or perhaps a trilogy. It says it’s gonna need more tokens, so you punch in your mom’s credit card number, just like you always do. While it compiles your brilliant masterpiece, you take a break and smoke for a while and chug an extra-large energy drink.

It’s goddamn tiring, being an artist.

Once the novel is done, you don’t even bother to read it. You’re a writer, after all! Reading is for all those idiots who’ll have no choice but to worship you as their new god. A few more clicks and there, the cover’s ready. The hands don’t look quite right, but fuck it, doesn’t matter. Another purchase with your mom’s credit card and boom, your book has a sweet trailer! You post it online, awaiting the glory that is rightfully owed at fucking last.

And while you’re at it, time to message agents: you get another bot to send a couple hundred emails, telling them just how lucky they would be to have the sliver of a chance to represent you. Submission guidelines? Pfft, nah, that’s for weaklings. You’re better than all that: establish dominance!

You give them all an hour to respond. Meanwhile, you go and generate some stories and throw them at all the magazines: let’s make it rain! Book publishing will take a little while: at least two weeks before the checks roll in. There, done: three hundred emails sent to all the editors, explaining why your genius creation (though you’re a little foggy on the plot) deserves to be on their front cover, nothing less. You also tell them you’re Estonian or whatever to make you look a whole lot more exotic in case they dare to question what you wrote.

But back on social media, the comments aren’t quite what you expected. Some nerds make a big meme out of your cover, saying the seven fingers and three nipples are unintentionally hilarious. You don’t quite understand, but hey, it’s free publicity, so you just ask if they’re going to pre-order⁠—and how many. Two minutes later, they make another meme of you. Whatever.

Some hippie chick complains about your AI usage, something about all the electricity and water and trees. That makes no sense, but she’s cute, so you don’t block her. Instead, you copy-paste your chatbot’s words about lawns and golf courses being destructive, too. You’ve never really golfed, though, so you’re not sure. The sunlight hurts your eyes whenever you step out of your mom’s basement. Nah, you’re an alpha-sigma loner wolf; the night is your domain. You chug more energy drinks and fantasize how you could totally fight crime using the ninja stars your mom gave you for Christmas.

Another glance at all your mentions and… what’s that? Some random site posted an article about you, calling you out by name. The vibes are bad. There’s too much text and not a lot of pictures, so you just ask your bot to summarize, and… Huh. The nerds are mad. The agents and the editors are even madder. Come on, where’s their sense of humor? Why can’t they appreciate your genius?

And… shit. A message from your friend, something about googling your name. You try that. The first two pages of results are memes and articles that mock you and your masterpiece. It takes a bunch of scrolling to find anything even remotely relevant, like that small-business page you once created for your dog-walking venture that never quite took off. (Apparently, dogs like to walk during the day.)

You wonder if this mess will go away if you just take a nap, but you’re too wired and unable to sit still and wait it out. Hmm, maybe change your name? Nah, too much work. How about this? You use the chatbot to compose a letter of apology, then copy the whole thing, post it online, and take another break to do some gaming.

Three hours later, you go online again⁠—and… shit, you didn’t quite remove the stupid prompt. The thing you posted for the world to see begins with, “Write something to tell those losers that I’m sorry, I don’t care what.” You swallow hard. Your heartbeat grows erratic. You google yourself one more time and… Huh. That’s a whole lot of memes. You don’t quite comprehend what they all mean. The ones you understand, though, are quite hurtful.

Your mom shouts your name. Ugh, what’s the matter? You stomp upstairs to see why she would dare to interrupt your restless genius. There, on the driveway by the unkempt lawn, you see four news trucks and ten journalists with microphones, and then you get the faintest intuition that maybe, possibly, you may have made a few mistakes.

Lily Lachance (she/her) is a trans woman, immigrant, award-winning filmmaker, author, poet, nomad, and adventurer based in Montreal. She's been published in the Antifa Lit Journal, Gavagai, and multiple anthologies. She enjoys bakeries, museums, stealing energy drinks from babies, and hiking from Mexico to Canada. Her blog is the same as her Bluesky handle: lilylachance.com

Jacob Baugher - foofaraw

2026-10-01T16:52:25.000Z

Read New Beginnings now!

So I’m of two minds for how this story resolves… on the one hand there’s the “this home, this timeline is where the heart is” on the other, our protagonist feeling incomplete almost feels like a subconscious regret of jumping. Where do you stand on this?

For me, this ending became a parallel to both mental illness and the constant wear of working for a job that doesn’t care about you. We sort of lie to ourselves constantly in regards to our work. “If I just get the promotion, I’ll be happy.” “If I just land the agent, I’ll feel complete.” “If I just get on the NYT bestseller list, It’ll all be worth it.” “If I just accomplish [the goal], I will be [who I’m supposed to be].” It’s a false choice, but I have no sage wisdom about overcoming the cultural lie.

Over the pandemic I opened up to my PCP about some struggles I was having. I told him “Sometimes I wish I would get COVID so I could spend two weeks in the hospital and no one would bother me.”

He pretty much threw anti-deppressants down my throat before I was finished speaking, but he said something at the end of the appointment that really stuck with me. I asked him if he’s seen an uptick of depression in patients since the pandemic and he chuckled and said something along the lines of “It was before the pandemic. Look at how we’re expected to live…”

There’s a whole book in there about how labor exploitation feeds mental illness, but I’m not exactly qualified to write it.

If you were given the seed in that situation, would you have jumped?

If I signed a predatory work contract that took me away from my wife and kids for years on end, then lost them anyway in a divorce and I was offered a chance to go back and make a different choice by an interdimensional being? Yeah, I’d probably jump and take my chances.

One thing I’m curious about is this idea of the “last galaxy seed” – does that mean we are in the final timeline?

No, just that corporate development has exploited nearly everything. The in-world explanation is that this SF Universe operates under the assumption of Black Hole Cosmology – that our entire universe and everything in it exists inside a supermassive black hole – and that inside every black hole’s singularity there is another entire universe and timeline. So the galaxy seed is more like the stuff to populate the void inside Herald’s new singularity universe that he created when he pressed the silver button in the story.

Are we to assume all of the jumpers were given a similar seed or were they really just trying to end it?

When I conceived of the story, it was a mix of the two. I left the predatory contract they all signed a bit too subtle in the final draft of the story.

What is it that you think would drive someone to give up 20 years with their significant other and kid in exchange for a cushy retirement?

I mean, I think people give up a lot just for a cushy retirement anyway. The nice thing about Sci-Fi is that people are willing to suspend disbelief even when pushed to extremes. But look at how our current world operates. We’re expected to work 8-12hrs a day, sometimes more than that. We’re expected to sacrifice our health, marriages, hopes, and dreams, just to scratch out a living on this Earth. At the end of it, most of us will probably die in debt with many regrets and leave nothing for our children.

On a personal note, my father used to work for a corporate office realtor. He was once pulled into the CEO’s office and told that he needed to work harder. The CEO told him that he’d sacrificed two marriages to his business and that he would expect my father to do the same.

Greed is a powerful motivator. I think many people forget that billionaires and major shareholders are not on our side. If they could get rid of us, they would, which is what they’re attempting to do with A.I…

America especially is due for a labor rights revival, and it needs to come soon.

Do you ever feel like our protagonist? Incomplete, like maybe you were up in the stars in another timeline?

I think we all do at times.

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

At least 30 times. I originally wrote this piece for Apex Flash Fiction Contest’s Vacuum Cleaner theme. I switched submission managers last year and not everything carried over. This story racked up a staggering number of personal rejections. I’m glad it finally found a home here.

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

I just finished up editing Flash Fiction Online’s Paranormal Noir anthology. All of the stories there are great reads (though I chose them so I’m biased). Otherwise, I want to highlight Parker O’Neill’s work. I don’t think I’ve read a story of his that I haven’t absolutely loved.

What book are you reading right now?

Right now I’m in the throes of an R&R for (hopefully) my future literary agent. Between that, life, and two kids, and reading for FFO’s slush, my leisure reading has ground to a halt. Earlier this year I loved Joe Abercrombie’s new book “The Devils” and I currently have every intention to read “Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism” by Peter Marshall, which is currently on my desk.

There’s a thousand things I’d like to share: Free Palestine; fuck A.I.; deFlock America; please for the love of God give me more political parties and also pay me more; your local librarians aren’t trying to turn your kids gay, they’re just trying to make everyone feel included. LGBT books are free speech, not an attack on your religion; remove pineapple from pizza; there is a difference between analytical and generative A.I. – one finds cancer, the other is the evil one – please stop conflating the two; our entire healthcare system is exploitative and needs to be reformed; infinite scroll is poop from a butt; If you use A.I. to write for you and then you lie about it you are also poop from a butt; please stop screaming in children’s faces during youth soccer practices you are not a professional soccer coach you are an embarrassment to men and having a mantrum. Go to therapy so you can address your big feelings I can’t believe we need to “Ms. Rachel” men in 2026.

There’s more but that about sums it up at this exact moment.

Please join me in giving a big round of applause to Jakey Baughey!

New Beginnings - foofaraw

2026-10-01T14:16:35.000Z

1.

Now

You take your time with the cleanup. Heavy machinery sparking in the dusty nebula. Great tubes sucking galactic slurry into density accelerators, the remains of the Crion system. Green interstellar glow-lights illuminate the sides of your Spidercraft: the gaudy text “Clifford’s Cosmic Catastrophe Mitigation” splashed across a black hole. Dim shadows kiss the photographs taped to your dash.

You don’t want to be here, staring down the edge of forever. No one does. But there’s no way out for either of us. Not yet.

“Did you hear? There was another jumper at the Orion site.” The words crackle over your comm, punctuated by bursts of static that makes the pictures of your daughter tremble. “They triggered the anomaly and he went right for it. Destabilized the whole sector.”

You don’t respond, but your foreman, Caius, does.

“Always gonna be jumpers.”

2.

Then

The foreman peered over his clipboard. “Herald Gorman?” His voice echoed in the dim hangar, reminiscent of cathedrals.

Herald nodded.

“Caius Brit. You can fly, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Happy first day,” Caius said, in a voice that was anything but. He gestured at the Spidercraft, a round, gray ball with manifold ports. “It’s basically a giant fucking vacuum cleaner. We launch from the station and you pilot it to the work zone. The ship will auto-connect to the vacuum appendages.” He pointed at a red ladder beneath the craft. “That’s how you get in.”

The ship’s cockpit was cramped. A single chair faced an octagonal viewport. Aside from the standard piloting equipment, four levers shined on the flight console.

“Red is for inorganic matter, blue for organic, yellow for gasses, black for fragments of any historical artifacts. Each lever sends whatever you’re sucking into a different density accelerator.” He pointed to the far side of the hangar at a line of craft: gray boxes the size of aircraft carriers labeled “Cosmic Garbage Vault.”

“It doesn’t really matter what goes where, but there are government regulations. If we get fined, it comes out of your pay.” He pointed to the black lever. “If you find anything sentient, do not engage even if it engages with you. Suck it up with everything else. As far as I'm concerned, if the universe didn’t want it, I don’t either.”

“What’s that?” Herald pointed at a large silver button at the center of the console.

“That,” said Caius, “creates the anomaly once we have enough matter in the accelerators. It sucks everything else down and then collapses in on itself, leaving a perfect void for corporate development.”

“Huh,” Herald said. “Neat.”

Caius rapped his clipboard on the flight console. “Do not approach the anomaly. It’s unstable and could cause massive damage to corporate profits. I’m sick of contract dodgers—we call them jumpers—do your twenty years, get your cushy retirement.”

“Of course. Where do I sign?”

Caius handed him the clipboard.

3.

Now

You wish you hadn’t signed the contract. Wish that you’d taken a normal job on Earth, but it’s too late. Time only flows one way for you.

I have been watching for eighteen years, since you limped in on that sorry excuse for a starship packed full of humans and Nerians and Avandii. I watched you tape up your photographs, a woman and child. You took the woman’s photo down, months later, left it crumpled on the spacecraft’s floor, then eventually vented it out of your craft’s waste-port. The letters from the child numbered fewer and fewer, until they stopped altogether. They are folded up in your room, the last dated five years ago, but still unread.

Perhaps you are the correct choice. Perhaps you will understand what most mono-sentient beings cannot.

4.

Now

“Accelerators full,” Caius’s voice crackles over the comm. “Initiate anomaly.

“Initiating.” Herald presses the silver button.

The remnant haze of the Crion system shudders, swirls into a vortex birthing a center of inky black.

“Craft, pull back,” Caius says.

A chorus of “rogers” warble from the comms. Spidercraft disengage from their vacuum tubes and head for the stars.

“Wait,” a voice says. It echoes, coming from everywhere and nowhere.

Herald waits. The other craft continue. A being appears outside the viewport, floating without life-support, shrouded in a cloak of watery rainbows illuminated by the green glow-lights. A face of black smoke and white eyes. He regards it warily.

“What are you?”

“Your species will call mine Void-breathers one day.”

“One day?”

“One day.”

The other Spidercraft keep retreating.

“What do you want?”

The Void-breather holds out a smoky hand, palm up. A white-blue orb blazes within it.

“The last galaxy seed. Take it. Go through the singularity.”

“Why?”

“It is necessary for continuation,” the being says. “The singularity will replenish them.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“Nothing, for you,” the being says. “But eventually, no more galaxies. No more tomorrows.”

“I think I’ll take my chances,” Herald says.

“Do you know why your superiors don’t want you near the anomaly?”

“I don’t know, they don’t want us to die?”

The being gestures to the logo on the ship. “Clifford cares about his employees?”

“God, no.”

“The singularity is ascension,” the Void-breather says. “A new beginning. As if this timeline never happened.”

The galaxy seed vanishes and appears in front of Herald, floating. “Take it, go, and you will be rewarded.”

Artwork by Addison Smith

5.

Tomorrow

You come home from your work at the library to your wife and daughter in the small suburban Virginia apartment, unaware of the Crion system or anything that happened there. You are happy, aside from the nightmares that you’re half-trapped somewhere, split, like part of you is being crushed and stretched and reformed into arabesque string under infinite bend. Sometimes it’s too much. You wake up sweating, spilling tears for half-remembered nightmares. Sometimes you stare off into hectic autumn leaves feeling incomplete; if only the final part of you would slide into place, then you’d finally be whole.

But don’t all humans feel that way?

Jacob Baugher is a writer, editor, and musician originally from Baltimore, Maryland. His work is featured in Flash Fiction Online, Radon Journal, Abyss & Apex, Foofaraw, and others. He earned his M.F.A. in fiction from Seton Hill University in 2017 and taught creative writing and composition at a small university in the Ohio Valley. Currently, is an assistant editor for Flash Fiction Online, works for the public library system, and plays in a progressive emo band called Cokeworks. You can follow his writing journey at http://thearchetypist.substack.com

📮 October Zine - foofaraw

2026-10-01T12:00:45.000Z

The October issue of Foofaraw Zine is here! Download below or read in our purpose built ebook reader.

Of course, all stories will be published for free on the web throughout the month, but paid supporters receive a PDF/EPUB with all of the month's stories at the beginning of the month, along with a few other goodies. And Patrons get stuff in print!

Or you can pick up a copy of this and more from our webstore or visit our friends at Weightless Books and pick up mags from other publishers as well!

This month...

Stories

New Beginnings by Jacob Baugher
Flanders, George and His Pimavanserin by William O'Brien
How to Avoid Your Problems by Hunter Ricci
The Devil You Know by Sarina Dorie
Bunk Brother by August Cao

Poems

3shortpoems by Julie Allyn Johnson
In your Tzara Dream by Mark J. Mitchell
Dryad by Robert Perchan
The Monster's Toybox by Lynne Sargent

Observations

So, You Want to be an AI Slopper by Lily Lachance
Sad Salad by Rachel M. Hollis
Review of All Your Friends Are Here by M. Shaw: Prose Over Plot by Jeff Goldberg
The Horror Essay by Nicholas De Marino

Toons

Loose Lips by Rusty Epstein
Older fellow by Ellie Black
Claw Machine by Zack Rhodes

Interviews

Jacob Baugher
William O'Brien
Hunter Ricci
Sarina Dorie
August Cao

Cover art

by Addison Smith

〄

On to the zines...

Platypus Portal - foofaraw

2026-09-29T16:00:42.000Z

The secret to interstellar travel was eventually found, not in the laboratories of Washington or Beijing, but in the riverbeds of eastern Tasmania. The planet Earth’s ultimate ambassador to the cosmos was not Homo Sapiens, as many had predicted, but Ornithorhynchus Anatinus, a winningly eccentric species known, to some, as the Duck-billed Platypus. Having discovered the miniature wormhole amid the rocks and leaf rot of their native habitat ⁠— a jagged, purple opening, crackling with uncertainty ⁠— the Duck-billed Delegation had waged a yearslong intergalactic charm offensive. Their fan-like feet waved diplomatically from the tranquil canals of Mars. Their slick, water-absorbing fur delighted the Hive Queen of Alpha Centauri, whose species had never known the concept of ‘wet.’ Their tails coiled with power and statesmanship as they helped to move organic matter for the Moon Beetle Dung Dams of Aldebaran IV. It was the most successful ambassadorial mission in the history of Platypuskind. The Delegation was tired. Bathed in the magenta glow of the Kindly Aperture, they raised their beaks in a collective salute, before turning as one and marching, with careworn dignity, back to the green riverbeds of Earth. The Platypuses’ new allies stirred with fellow-feeling as they growled, gurgled, and grinned in farewell.

Cracks in spacetime mark
The hatching of new friendships;
Travel well, comrades.

William Shaw is a writer from Sheffield, currently living in the USA. His writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and The Georgia Review. You can find his website at https://williamshawwriter.wordpress.com and his Bluesky at @williamshaw.bsky.social.

Aeryn Rudel - foofaraw

2026-09-25T16:00:33.000Z

Read Time Has No Memory now!

This may be a little inside baseball, but I believe you’ve done a good deal of “contract work” yourself⁠—do you see yourself in the main character at all?

I mean, there’s contract work and then there’s CONTRACT WORK. I’ve done the former, but you know, none of the latter. I’ve always been fascinated with mercs, bounty hunters, and contract killers, though. I think it’s largely because those people, especially how they’re portrayed in popular media, don’t really exist. They’re a heroic (or antiheroic) archetype that is definitely more fantasy than reality. Of course, there are real mercenaries and hitmen out there, but the suave John Wick types are pure mythology. So, no, I don’t see myself in this character, but he’s definitely the kind of character a like to write about.

Two character moments really stood out to me… First, the protagonist’s relationship with their mother. As a momma’s boy, I’m curious how much of that relationship comes from your own?

I was and am close with my mother, though she’s perfectly healthy. My mom is part of the reason I started reading horror, fantasy, and sci-fi, and she definitely encouraged my writing from early on. So, yeah, there are probably some threads in this story that mirror my actual relationship with my own mother, and maybe about my own fears of growing older.

The premise of the story was always harvesting the organs of prehistoric animals for miracle cures, though the first drafts didn’t skewer the health care industry the way the published story does. That part kind of developed after a got a few rejections on the piece and did some revisions. I realized the main character needed a deeper motivation than just money, so his mother’s ailment and the cure developed out of that. It improved the story, and I’m almost certain that’s what led to me finally selling it.

What is it about dinosaurs you find interesting?

Oh, I’m a HUGE dinosaur nerd, and I have been since I was a kid. Up until the age of like 14, when folks would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my immediate answer would be paleontologist. Yes, I came within an eyelash of becoming Ross Geller. Anyway, then I discovered that I could write a little, and that kind of took over. But I’ve been reading about and studying dinosaurs and other prehistoric critters for most of my life, and I think what I find so interesting about them is, for lack of a better word, they’re monsters that actually existed. I mean, think about the T-rex in this story. We’re talking about a 40-foot, 8-ton predator that ate an elephant’s worth of meat on the daily. If that doesn’t inspire you to write some sci-fi (or horror), I don’t know what will.

Why no vampires in this story?

I’ve been told that not EVERY story needs vampires. I’m not sure I believe it, but you can consider “Time Has No Memory” as an experimental vampire-free story from me. I guess it’s okay, but, come on; a vampire T-rex would be metal as hell, right?

Is there any chance this is actually a vampire origin story and the K-T asteroid turns our protagonist into the first vampire?

When I first read this, I laughed, then, of course, I started thinking about it. What would a 65-million-year-old vampire even look like? What kind of powers would he have? Godlike, right? So, if the KT extinction event turns my protagonist into the first vampire, then he’s wandering the Earth alone for eons, growing in power, drinking the blood of the prehistoric critters that come after the dinos, and, let’s face it, going completely nuts. Then, 64,750,000 years ago, our first furry ancestors pop up, and now our ur-vampire has new tasty treats and eventually people to worship him. So, what I’m saying is you get the first vampire AND pretty much every deity humans have concocted in this one poor son-of-a-bitch just trying to do right by his momma.

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

This story is my biggest loser. It was rejected twenty-five times before Abyss & Apex bought it, a record for a story I’ve actually sold. Now it has a new home in Foofaraw, and I couldn’t be more pleased.

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

Went back and reread Elmore Leonard’s “Fire in the Hole”, which is the story that introduces the character of Raylan Givens, he of Justified fame. Hell of a story. So efficient and compelling. Classic Leonard.

What book are you reading right now?

I’ve been rereading some of my favorites. Right now, since I’ve been writing and subbing a fair amount of crime and mystery stories, I went back an read Stephen King’s Billy Summers and Later, two of the best crime novels I’ve read since Elmore Leonard passed.

Thanks to Aeryn for chatting about dinos, moms, time travel, etc.!

Time Has No Memory - foofaraw

2026-09-24T16:00:30.000Z

The Late Cretaceous is hotter than the other periods I’ve visited. My dossier says it’s because of all the volcanic activity. I can’t see any volcanoes from my campsite, which is on the shore of the prehistoric Pacific Ocean, but the air is thick, like a bad smog day in Los Angeles.

I’m queasy from the jump. Time travel is like being shoved through a kaleidoscope made of light, sound, and terror. I’m told it’s so painful because it’s not just time travel. It’s also something like time fracturing. Whenever they send one of us back, it creates a new timeline, a new universe, separate and parallel to our own. I have no reason not to take the techs at their word. All I know is that I end up puking my guts out after each jump. Not exactly the best way to arrive in a world full of monsters.

I ended up in a nice spot, beach-front property in what will be Fresno, California in sixty-six million years. The beach wasn’t empty when I arrived. I share it with a flock of giant birds that look like a cross between a duck and a heron, only they’re the size of harbor seals and sport beaks filled with teeth as long as my finger. My field guide tells me they’re called Hesperornis rossicus, and they should be harmless. I wonder if they taste like chicken.

I set my camp a hundred yards from the water⁠—the Cretaceous oceans are filled with horrors, and placing a football field between me and them seems a sensible precaution. I don’t have much with me, just the essentials: food, weapons, tent, water purification tablets, a compact first aid and surgery kit, a compass, and a small but powerful gas-powered bone saw that will run for hours on a half-liter of ethanol. All that fits neatly into a moderately sized backpack, and not one of these items runs on batteries or includes electronics of any kind. That’s the real motherfucker of time travel⁠—it completely fries anything with electronics. No datapads, no thermal imagers, not even a goddamn flashlight. Finally, I have my mission dossier, which, among other things, tells me all about the prehistoric beast I’m here to hunt and kill.

I’m exhausted, and my mouth still tastes like vomit, so I’ll end here. I hear the Hesperornis on the beach, squawking and hissing. I’ll put my pistol beneath my pillow, just in case they’re wondering if I taste like chicken.

I watched the sun come up over the ocean this morning. Beautiful. I’m not the kind of guy who is particularly moved by sunrises, but, hey, I’ve never been the only human being to witness one.

Of course, the morning wasn’t all sunshine and poetry. While I was choking down a breakfast of instant coffee and an MRE (something the package claimed was scrambled eggs), I was reminded how dangerous the ancient past can be. All was serene until a mosasaur⁠—a forty-foot monster that looks like a cross between a whale and crocodile⁠—burst out of the surf and dragged a Hesperornis to a bloody, watery death while its compatriots scattered, squawking in terror. Reminded me of killer whales doing the same thing to seals in my own time. Nature has been playing from the same deck for a long time.

I guess now is a good time to tell you why I’m writing in the blank spaces of my mission dossier with a stubby golf pencil I smuggled in⁠—RevChem forbids any recording of our little jaunts. I wonder if that’s the real reason we can’t take anything electronic or why we go alone. If what they’re doing got out, especially in something like a live-capture vid, they’d be royally fucked. But I’m jumping ahead. Let me start with this. What am I doing here sixty-six million years in the past?

Money is the simplest answer. RevChem Pharmaceuticals has been mining the past for its riches. Those riches are the organs of long-extinct animals, some of which harbor miracle medical treatments. The brain from a Tyrannosaurus Rex, for example, produces a protein that halts and even reverses the advancement of Alzheimer’s. You can imagine how profitable that is. Thing is, no one is supposed to have time-travel equipment. It’s illegal, and RevChem is covering their asses with a truckload of bogus science. That Alzheimer’s cure? They say it comes from the brains of Andean condors. From what I’ve learned, there are enough similarities to fool some people in the medical community, and, well, the others are turning a blind eye because we’re talking billions of dollars here.

Speaking of money. RevChem pays folks like me⁠—former military special forces and other hard-edged assholes⁠—a absurd sums of money because no one else is stupid or tough enough to survive hunting prehistoric monsters for their precious organs. They pay us a lot because it’s dangerous, and they pay us a lot so we keep our mouths shut. I thought I could do that. I thought the seven-figure paydays would curb any guilt I felt going along with RevChem’s secret operation. Unfortunately, I’ve developed a conscience. It’s all because of my mom. Yeah, even hard-edged assholes like me have a mom, and mine was a goddamn superhero.

My dad bailed on us pretty early on. Well, we sort of bailed on him first, I guess. Mom finally got tired of him smacking the shit out of her, and thought he might turn his fists on me. She got the jump on him with my little-league baseball bat, and put his ass in the hospital. We skipped town before he could sufficiently recover and come looking for payback. It was just me and her from then on. She worked two or three jobs to make sure we had enough to eat, that I had clothes for school, and a life that included things like joy and love. When I joined the Army, I tried to return the favor and send money home, so she wouldn’t have to work so much anymore.

Mom started having problems in her early fifties. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s two days after her fifty-third birthday. Things got worse with each passing year, and eventually I had to come home, accept a private security job, and take care of her. I watched her slowly fade over the next three years, losing more and more of herself to the disease, until, at the end, there was nothing left of the woman who’d been the absolute foundation of my life.

After that, I kind of drifted from one dangerous, likely-to-get-you-killed job to the next. I did a lot of mercenary work all over the world, including Africa, where I worked for the Kenyan government, hunting poachers on the Masai Mara wildlife reserve. That’s where RevChem recruited me.

I didn’t know what I’d be doing at first⁠—RevChem was obviously tight-lipped about it. When I found out, I should have told them to go fuck themselves. Instead, I saw a chance to experience something few people could even dream of. I also thought what better place to hide from the horrors of my past than millions of years before they even happened. The money didn’t hurt either.

Unfortunately, guilt is a powerful force, and it can reach back through time and space and grab hold of you. My guilt was clothed in memories of my mom, and it eventually pushed me to reach out to NewsNow, one of the few unbiased news agencies, and bear my soul. I told them how RevChem was using illegal time travel equipment to pillage the past. I related that one T-Rex brain provides enough genetic material to treat a thousand Alzheimer’s patients, but RevChem offers the treatment to a fraction of that number to drive up the price.

NewsNow is running their article in a few days. I’ll be back before the dam breaks, time enough to collect the money RevChem is paying for this job. I suppose that makes me a hypocrite, but I’m gonna tell myself it’s okay because this journal is the start to a book that’ll blow the cover off everything. I’m gonna tell myself it’ll lead to people like my mom getting treated.

I even sort of believe it.

Spent all day hunting. No dice.

My target is a healthy adult Tyrannosaurus Rex (apparently the brains of juveniles don’t carry that magic protein). An adult T-Rex is a forty-foot-long killing machine with dagger-sized teeth and a bite force registering north of six tons. You’d think an animal that big would be easy to find. You’d be wrong. One thing I learned in Kenya was that predators are adept at remaining unseen, even giant ones like T-Rexes.

If you know anything about hunting predators, you also know hunting them directly rarely pays off. The best tactic is to post up near their favorite food and wait for the lions and tigers and bears to get hungry. This morning, I followed my compass west and trekked inland through pine forests that make the Redwoods look like someone’s backyard. I was searching for T-Rex’s favorite prey. That just happens to be an animal only slightly less terrifying than Rexy himself. Triceratops horridus is thirty feet long, weighs about eight tons, and its head features a bony crest that is both bullet-proof (trust me on this one) and Rex-proof. That monstrous head also sports three massive horns. The two above its eyes are a yard long and anything on the wrong end of them, be it T-Rex or a hapless time-traveler, is shish kebab.

I found a herd of Triceratops, about twenty of them, in a big clearing five clicks from my campsite. They’re dangerous, but, like most herbivores, they’ll leave you alone unless you get too close or mess with their young. I made myself a hunting blind near the tree line, and watched and waited. People often think hunting is some grand adventurous escapade. It’s mostly sitting in the boonies with your thumb up your ass hoping whatever you’re hunting actually shows up. Today, I spent nine hours watching Triceratops eat and shit and then eat some more. It held all the majesty of watching a herd of giant, well-armed cows.

When I was certain that T-Rex wasn’t going to show, I climbed into a nearby tree, and slung my hammock. My dossier says T-Rex doesn’t hunt at night, but I’d rather not sleep on the ground and test the theory. As I lay here with my rifle across my lap and writing in the last rays of the Cretaceous sun, I’m thinking about Mom. Thinking about her last year and how the treatments we could afford did next to nothing. How, at the end, she didn’t even know who I was.

The more I think about Mom, the more I think about all the people RevChem is not helping, and the more I hate myself for getting involved in their shit show to begin with. You take the devil’s money, and you do the devil’s bidding, and, in the end, the devil gets your soul. Well, he’s gonna pay through the fucking nose for mine.

Last note. Night has fallen, but I’m watching the most epic meteor shower. Hundreds of them, lighting up the night like flares. Hell of a show.

Success!

I bagged a T-Rex. Happened first thing this morning. I woke to the Triceratops herd making an ungodly racket. Imagine the honking of a goose mixed with an air-raid siren, and you’ll have some approximation of a Triceratops alarm bleat. A pair of Rexes had cornered one of the Triceratops juveniles, a little ten-footer with no chance of fighting off the monsters who’d come to eat it.

It’s weird; you grow up with pictures of dinosaurs. Artist interpretations, you know?. They show these scaly, lumbering brutes, but the truth is radically different. A T-Rex has a thick, almost barrel-shaped body, and they’ve got feathers and scales. The feathers are drab green and run along their backs, while their legs and bellies are covered in brown, pebble-like scales. Despite their size, they move like birds⁠—fast and fluid⁠—like ostriches bred with dragons. They’re borderline ridiculous, until you get to that massive head and teeth. Nothing ridiculous about those.

The adult Triceratops managed to drive off one of the Rexes, but not before the second one went in for the kill. That’s when I took my shot. Like I said, no high-tech gear, but even though I can’t pack the latest gauss carbine, I’m not exactly sporting Davy Crockett’s bear rifle. My Simpson M105 fires .50 caliber, explosive-tipped rounds that can put soccer-ball sized holes in two feet of concrete. I shot my Rex just as he opened those jaws of death to turn the juvenile Triceratops into dino-chow. I hit him just behind his two dinky arms, obliterating heart and lungs in a spray of blood. The Rex staggered to the side, eyes wide and goggling, then keeled over. The gunshot scattered the herd of Triceratops, and in a few minutes the glade was empty and quiet.

I left my hunting blind, made my way across the clearing to the T-Rex corpse, and fired up my bone saw. It’s messy cutting through skin, meat, and a half-inch of bone, but there’s no other way to do it. T-Rex’s brain is located in the back of its skull, and it’s surprisingly small for such a big animal, about half the size of a human brain. Once I cut it out, I put the brain in a special vacuum sealed bag and started hoofing it back to my camp.

That’s really the most dangerous part of this whole thing. Stinking like carrion and trekking back through five miles of monster-infested forest. I had to sling my rifle to carry the brain, and, yeah, sure, I could probably get to my pistol if another T-Rex showed up, but that’d be like shooting a mountain with a slingshot.

I made it back to camp, burned my blood-soaked fatigues, and changed into a fresh pair. Luckily, the vacuum seal around the specimen blocks any odor, so I shouldn’t attract any unwanted attention tonight.

I’m supposed to snap back to the present at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. That’s how it works. You’re on a timer. The techs give you a certain number of days to do the job, and when that time expires, the machinery yanks you back. It’s worse than the journey to get here. Like being squeezed through a hole a little too small for you to fit.

There was another meteor shower tonight. Even brighter than last night. Scared the shit out of the Hesperornis, and they all flocked into the sea, leaving me alone on my little stretch of beach. Fine by me. Tomorrow I go home, get paid, and this will be the last time I visit the past. That’s a little bittersweet, to be honest. I mean, how many people get to see the things I’ve seen? The consolation prize is RevChem will be exposed, and I’ll have done something approaching worthwhile with my life. Still feels like I got a lot more to answer for, but it’s a start.

It’s 10:00 a.m. as I write this, and I’m still in the Cretaceous. The techs have been a little off before, but only by a few minutes. An hour is definitely out of the ordinary. Of course, it could be just a technical malfunction. I mean, we’re talking about time travel, right?

It’s noon and technical difficulties seem a lot less likely. I’m a cynical bastard, and I’m starting to think RevChem got wind of my little story at NewsNow and figured it would be a lot worse if I came back to corroborate all that ooey-gooey evidence. No need to hire a hitman to remove someone if you can arrange for them to slowly die sixty-six million years in the past, right?

I wonder how long I can survive. I have a finite amount of ammunition, and I don’t fancy hunting dinosaurs with sharp sticks. Seems pointless to even try, but there’s a part of me that can’t go quietly. I’ll stick it out for as long as I can.

Seems silly to keep writing this down, but I like doing it. It’s calming. Cathartic.

It’s midnight, and I am struck by a line I wrote in a previous entry. I’m definitely gonna get to see some shit no one has ever seen before. For starters, I was treated to the biggest meteor shower of all time. Thousands of shooting stars, some so big they made it all the way to the surface. I heard impacts from multiple directions, and I can already smell the fires to the east.

Then the big one came. The K-T asteroid passed overhead, and it was like someone hurled that sun at me. The light from the thing was like noon on a summer day.

That was twenty minutes ago. I felt the impact, even thousands of miles away, and a fiery glow bloomed on the horizon. The shockwave will hit soon.

RevChem couldn’t just leave me to die in the past. They needed to make a statement. It’s a little over the top, but I gotta hand it to them. The calculations they had to pull off to put me right here, right now must have cost millions. I’m honestly flattered they went to all this trouble.

I’m sorry as hell I won’t be able to help more folks like my mom. If there’s something beyond all this, maybe I’ve done enough to see her again. That’s a nice thought, and I’m going to hold it close, sit on the beach, and wait for the world to end.

Aeryn Rudel is a writer from Tacoma, Washington. He is the author of the baseball horror novella Effectively Wild, the Iron Kingdoms Acts of War novels, and the flash fiction collection Night Walk & Other Dark Paths. His short stories have appeared in Abyss & Apex. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Pseudopod, among others. Learn more about Aeryn's work at www.rejectomancy.com or on Bluesky @aerynrudel.bsky.social.

The Source Behind The Ban - The Independent Variable

2026-09-23T21:48:09.000Z

The anonymous source behind one of the stories the White House cited to justify banning POLITICO was none other than Vice President JD Vance, Status has learned. On Monday, Vance himself also defended the White House’s decision to ban POLITICO. “They can still report on the Trump White House,” he told reporters. “They can still get the public reports. They can still, of course, talk to people in the administration and outside the administration.” He then added: “If you actually look at the objective analysis … POLITICO is as anti-Trump as Breitbart was anti-Obama or anti-Biden.”

The call was coming from inside the house, you say??? What a bunch of morons—the audacity!

Tyler Lee - foofaraw

2026-09-23T17:32:50.000Z

💡

Read Dinosaurs Are Too Big now!

So what do you have against heavy-duty, industrial sized dinos like the Triceratops? What did they ever do to you?!

You know what, this is a valid point, it really isn’t fair to the dinos to put this all on them. In real-life I have an intense amount of anxiety around motor vehicles. I don’t drive myself (never have, never will) and I prefer to get things done on foot or by bicycle whenever possible, but that’s not really realistic in a place like Saskatchewan. My fiance grew up out in the country and has been driving since she was young because that’s really the only way to get anywhere out there. She never really “got” my car-anxiety at first. One time she asked me to try and describe it, and the best analogy I could come up with was to say that being in a car/in traffic makes me feel like I’m on the back of a dinosaur, surrounded by other dinosaurs, and I have to just trust them not to do dinosaur things. That conversation stayed stuck in the back of my mind for a few months, and then you announced that foofaraw was running a dino-themed issue and I thought “maybe there’s a piece in there somewhere?”

How do you have such a vast knowledge of dinosaurs??

I was a kid in the '90s, and I feel like that was a very dino-heavy era: Jurassic Park, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, all that stuff. I had a pretty heavy dino-phase when I was young, where I would consume anything dino-related like crazy, from cartoons to those big hardcover books from the Scholastic fair with all the infographics and everything. I ate that stuff up. When I was seven or so, we went on a long family road trip, and one of the stops was at the Royall Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, which is an absolutely incredible dinosaur museum, and it absolutely blew my mind. I made it back to Drumheller in late-2024 while I was on tour, and got to spend another afternoon there, and it was just as magical as an adult. Dinosaurs rule.

Do you have a favorite dinosaur? What dinosaur would you be driving to work?

I always thought the ankylosaurus was very cool. It’s much smaller than the classic dinos like the t-rex, it doesn’t look fast like a velociraptor, he’s kind of just a little guy, but he’s plated in armour and he has this big club tail (which I guess would be almost impossible to aim with any accuracy because it’s behind the head anyway) – I don’t know but there’s something simultaneously so cool and so impractical about the ankylosaurus that has always tickled my brain.

Assuming this is an Editor’s Chisel for some sort of publication… what would the publication be called?

I actually brainstormed a few different ideas for this when I was drafting, and they were all basically “(some kind of rock-based pun for an existing city) + (some kind of ancient writing medium)” but by the end I felt like maybe the piece worked better if the silly puns didn’t really start rolling until the body of the story. The last publication title I had settled on before I finally decided to just pull it was “The Sedmenton Daily Cuneiform”

How would the publication get delivered? Are their paper boys and girls? What do they ride???

I like to think that even in this crazy world, children aren’t expected to be responsible for dinosaurs on their own. Instead, they probably have like a sled that gets dragged behind a team of sabretooth tigers (much safer) from door to door.

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

None. I wrote this one specifically with this call in mind.

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

I know I’m about forty years late to the party on this one, but I’ve only recently become aware of the work of Lorrie Moore, and I’m absolutely flabbergasted at just how incredible her stories are. I’m a sucker for second-person POV, and sad people being beautiful in their brokenness. Moore is a master of both things. “How To Be An Other Woman” seems to be her most well-known story, and it’s absolutely worthy of all the praise that’s been heaped upon it over the decades, but nearly every story in her Self Help collection is brilliant IMO.

What book are you reading right now?

I’m nearly finished Paul Auster’s In The Country of Last Things. I’m a huge fan of Auster, and while this one doesn’t work quite as well for me as my favourites from him, I’m enjoying it quite a lot. The dystopia depicted in the novel is interesting in so far as it feels (to me) simultaneously both very alien and very mundane. The political structure and “mechanics” (for lack of a better word) of the society are constantly in flux, and completely hidden from the characters (and the readers) but the people adapt to these changes in a way that almost makes them seem normal. That realization is especially chilling for the reader (or at least it is for me) in the current political environment, where it feels like the President of the United States, tech billionaires, and other global power brokers are conjuring up “new normals” on a near-monthly basis, and getting scary amounts of buy-in from the public on them.

If you like way-too-wordy underground hip-hop, you can find my music under the name Skizza on most streaming platforms. I have stories recently-ish published in Radon Journal, Grain Magazine, Temz Review, Neon & Smoke, spring, and of course foofaraw, and I have stuff coming out in the TBD-but-near-ish future with The New Quarterly, and Tome & Space. I’m on Instagram/Threads @skizzafromsask.

Make Art. Drink Water. Read Books. Lift Weights. Love People.

Thanks to Tyler for talking dinos and the safer alternative, saber tooth tigers!

Raised by Dinosaurs - foofaraw

2026-09-23T16:00:55.000Z

💡

Zack Rhodes is a cartoonist based in Sonoma County. Find him on Instagram @solditfor50

Dinosaurs Are Too Big - foofaraw

2026-09-23T15:01:41.000Z

From the Editor’s Chisel:

The dust has finally settled on Tuesday’s tragic three stegosaurus pile-up. Five people are dead, another seven seriously injured. Our city is at rock bottom, scraping to find some answers. Folks, trust me when I say I’m not one of those hippie-dippie, free-the-lizards activists, who expects everyone to get around on their own two hairy feet, like they did back in the Triassic. I’m a modern, Cretaceous man, with modern, Cretaceous values; some of my best childhood memories are those summer holidays when Dad would hitch the camper up to the family Parasaurolophus and burn gravel, with nothing but a map and a half-tank of leaves to guide us. I get it⁠—there’s something intoxicating about hitting the open-road with four powerful legs beneath you, all four chambers of that dino-heart roaring with five-hundred pounds of pure, unbridled lizardpower. But in light of the recent catastrophes, even this commentator is forced to acknowledge an uncomfortable fact: dinosaurs have simply gotten too big.

I recognize I run the risk of sounding out-of-touch. This might come across as the stereotypical “old man yelling at the ghosts in the sky that rain their dreams into our heads” here. But if you’re of a certain age, you remember a time when Sedmenton was a quiet, safe place to raise your children. When kids could walk or slateboard to school, and every driveway housed a practical, family-friendly dino, like an Austoraptor or an Ankylosaurus. But nowadays, the mantra is bigger is better. That’s great for the luxury reptile dealers, and the leaf stations, but what about the rest of us? My next door neighbour rides a Triceratops to work. Yes, a TRICERATOPS⁠—with all three horns, and a giant armour plate on the head, which must be a nightmare for blindspots. My neighbour doesn’t scavenge mammoth carcasses from the ice-wilds for a living, nor does he have to haul sheets of rock around town to do construction work. My neighbour works as a tabletkeeper at the bank. By all accounts, a good one, but a tabletkeeper nonetheless. When even white-tunic workers feel like they need heavy-duty, industrial-sized dinos for their daily commutes, I can’t help but feel we’ve lost our way.

It was only last year that The Cave Matthews Band’s driver fell asleep at the reigns, and crashed their Tour Rex into a crowded promenade, killing nearly a dozen people, and wounding countless others. How many more tragedies like this must we endure before we do something about it?

Tyler Lee is a writer, poet, and hip-hop artist. His work has been published in Grain Magazine, Radon Journal, and Neon & Smoke. Tyler lives in Saskatoon, Canada, where he owns a completely normal amount of sneakers, and definitely isn't on a first-name basis with the staff of his neighbourhood burrito spot.

Ed Sheeran Delivers Pointless Statement Then Cries During Latest Concert - The Independent Variable

2026-09-22T23:23:59.000Z

Sheeran delivered everything you'd expect from a person in his position: equivocating, meaningless bullshit that was most likely written by someone else.

More reasons not to ever pay attention to Ed Sheeran—not that I've ever intentionally listened to any of his music. There are just so many choices he could have made to handle this differently, but he just went with the most basic, toothless, and cowardly approach. I definitely don't think every individual has to have an opinion on every political matter in the world, but being against genocide seems like a pretty simple one so enabling the silence of someone who has spoken up to support the Palestinian people seems like a pretty idiotic thing to do. Just be human for gods sake.

Robert Eggers to Direct ‘Romeo and Juliet’ for Focus Features — Will Be His Next Film - The Independent Variable

2026-09-22T23:20:20.000Z

No surprise, sources say the actors will be speaking the original Shakespearean language. Of course they will. This is the guy who made Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson talk in 19th-century maritime dialect, and who researched Viking-era speech for “The Northman.” Nobody should expect otherwise from Eggers.

I really wish people would stop it with the Shakespearean English. Robert Eggers doing Romeo and Juliet actually sounds like a fun pairing, but I'm so tired of all the Shakespeare language—I get that it's lyrical and I'm probably supposed to think it's elegant, but I hate it so much.

Caleb Williams Suffers Awful Injury At Awful Time In Awful Game - The Independent Variable

2026-09-22T23:14:10.000Z

It’s a horribly sad turn of events for a team that, after decades of futility, finally seemed on the verge of a real breakthrough.

This was a heartbreaking game to watch—devastatingly terrible football, followed by this injury. Luckily, it sounds like a minor hamstring injury. If that's the case, I bet they sit him for the next two games to make sure he's 110% and hopefully he makes a return without issue.

‘We Hacked the FBI:’ Hackers Say They Have Data on All FBI Employees - The Independent Variable

2026-09-22T23:12:11.000Z

When asked if ShinyHunters was going to attempt to extort the FBI, the representative said, “what we plan to do is not something I’d call extortion, maybe coercion.” “This is not financially motivated,” they added.

This is absolutely bonkers. Obviously, ShinyHunters aren't great people given they likely make a living via hacking and extortion, but... I am interested to see what "coercion" means in this instance against the current administration.

FPF statement on ‘editorial independence board’ for CBS and CNN - The Independent Variable

2026-09-22T05:33:12.000Z

The fish rots from the head, and this particular fish is headed by a compromised oligarch with a history of throwing journalists under the bus to advance his business interests

‘Nuff said. I mean, I get the hesitation, they’re scared. But in a situation like this, you have to use every lever you have, and that means fighting until the end. I still think Paramount would’ve regretted moving to Tennessee more than California would have.

We Must Create the Shit Machine - The Independent Variable

2026-09-19T18:36:32.000Z

Could the Shit Machine END WORLD HUNGER? It’s NOT IMPOSSIBLE in the most LITERAL SENSE, which is all the justification we need to invest an AMOUNT OF MONEY that would OTHERWISE BY ITSELF END ACTUAL WORLD HUNGER.

I’m not sure I’ll quote a better line than this all year.

On the sincerity of AI bosses - The Independent Variable

2026-09-19T00:21:24.000Z

Conservative political victories are always followed by economic misery for the conservative base, because the senior partners in the conservative coalition are the bosses who get richer by making workers poorer. Conservative rulers try to offset this with spectacular acts of cruelty against disfavored minorities, but this tactic only carries so far. Eventually, the electorate notices that despite terrorizing migrants and trans people, diesel is now $10/gallon and the guy responsible is now $1.4b richer than he was before the election.

Not sure you could summarize the past/present/future of politics and elections any better than that. I think there are three major factors that contribute to the cycle: 1) greed (obviously); 2) human beings like to follow. I mean, look at all these “alpha males” who, by definition, are betas as they keep looking to others for how to be “alpha;” and 3) selfishness, which sounds obvious, but it contributes to a lot more than just “Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie.” When we let our selfish ego take over, it’s easy to look at things as a zero-sum game—if someone else is winning, you must be losing. This leads to “othering” and then demonizing other groups of people to ensure you and yours don’t fall behind. I have more to say about how pacifism and rising tides are principles to follow to prevent you from falling into the trap of those instincts, but I’m still at a loss for how to bring folks on the dark side into the light.

Humdrum Places - BlogFlock

Some ordinary results (year ii) - foofaraw

Longlist

Honorable mentions

Winners

Frayed Threads

A Cold Day in Hell and Other Graveyard Shift Problems

Beyond Anywhere

Have Hands, Will Hench - foofaraw

Digital copy for paid subscribers

So, You Want to be an AI Slopper - foofaraw

Jacob Baugher - foofaraw

So I’m of two minds for how this story resolves… on the one hand there’s the “this home, this timeline is where the heart is” on the other, our protagonist feeling incomplete almost feels like a subconscious regret of jumping. Where do you stand on this?

If you were given the seed in that situation, would you have jumped?

One thing I’m curious about is this idea of the “last galaxy seed” – does that mean we are in the final timeline?

Are we to assume all of the jumpers were given a similar seed or were they really just trying to end it?

What is it that you think would drive someone to give up 20 years with their significant other and kid in exchange for a cushy retirement?

Do you ever feel like our protagonist? Incomplete, like maybe you were up in the stars in another timeline?

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

What book are you reading right now?

Do you have anything else you’d like to share?

Please join me in giving a big round of applause to Jakey Baughey!

New Beginnings - foofaraw

1.

Now

2.

Then

3.

Now

4.

Now

5.

Tomorrow

📮 October Zine - foofaraw

This month...

Stories

Poems

Observations

Toons

Interviews

Cover art

Platypus Portal - foofaraw

Aeryn Rudel - foofaraw

This may be a little inside baseball, but I believe you’ve done a good deal of “contract work” yourself⁠—do you see yourself in the main character at all?

Two character moments really stood out to me… First, the protagonist’s relationship with their mother. As a momma’s boy, I’m curious how much of that relationship comes from your own?

What is it about dinosaurs you find interesting?

Why no vampires in this story?

Is there any chance this is actually a vampire origin story and the K-T asteroid turns our protagonist into the first vampire?

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

What book are you reading right now?

Thanks to Aeryn for chatting about dinos, moms, time travel, etc.!

Time Has No Memory - foofaraw

The Source Behind The Ban - The Independent Variable

Tyler Lee - foofaraw

So what do you have against heavy-duty, industrial sized dinos like the Triceratops? What did they ever do to you?!

How do you have such a vast knowledge of dinosaurs??

Do you have a favorite dinosaur? What dinosaur would you be driving to work?

Assuming this is an Editor’s Chisel for some sort of publication… what would the publication be called?

How would the publication get delivered? Are their paper boys and girls? What do they ride???

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

What book are you reading right now?

Do you have anything else you’d like to share?

Thanks to Tyler for talking dinos and the safer alternative, saber tooth tigers!

Raised by Dinosaurs - foofaraw

Dinosaurs Are Too Big - foofaraw

From the Editor’s Chisel:

Ed Sheeran Delivers Pointless Statement Then Cries During Latest Concert - The Independent Variable

Robert Eggers to Direct ‘Romeo and Juliet’ for Focus Features — Will Be His Next Film - The Independent Variable

Caleb Williams Suffers Awful Injury At Awful Time In Awful Game - The Independent Variable

‘We Hacked the FBI:’ Hackers Say They Have Data on All FBI Employees - The Independent Variable

FPF statement on ‘editorial independence board’ for CBS and CNN - The Independent Variable

We Must Create the Shit Machine - The Independent Variable

On the sincerity of AI bosses - The Independent Variable