blaine arcade

Taxa Disaster (Part One)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

Only finding fossils, we never suspected the flesh of the dinosaurs could’ve been so strange, could’ve climbed off whenever it felt like it and even borrowed our shape.  That is the forgotten clade thanazoa, but they know of us, thanks to communing with their fungus-like oracle Atropos.

A defeated villain resurfaces to abuse those predictions, her predatory eyes set on the future she thinks she is denied.  Discover a brand new world on familiar bones in this wildly speculative novella of the Triassic period.

(reading time: 1 hour, 13 minutes) (reading time for entire novella: 2 hours, 24 minutes)

Taxa Disaster

by

Blaine Arcade

‘Even if, one day, we had access to perfectly preserved fossils, a vital aspect of animal life would still elude our grasp. Behavior is almost entirely lost in the fossil record. Imagine the richness and strange wonder of animal life today. The eerie, ululating songs of whales, the elaborate middens of bowerbirds and the surreal spectacle of a peacock’s display could never be deduced from inanimate remains.

Likewise, some of the most spectacular sights of the past will never be seen, or even guessed.’

– All Yesterdays

Centipede

The insects were reluctant to touch it, and that reluctance continued on down to everything that could be called life. The fungi refused to take the first bite. The bacteria self-destructed rather than continue touching it for more than a moment. It was as if they knew what kind of will had inhabited it just one day prior. Continue reading →

Juicy Stardrop (Finale)

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Back to the Beginning

(reading time: 1 hour, 13 minutes)

juicytitles

Münstereifel was the forest where one couldn’t help but feel watched. Despite the stodgy old growth being stuffed into a pocket of Germany, the sensation was not like being a grim fairy tale child wandering between dark trees with glowing beastly eyes all about. No, the eyes were far more ethereal, and for Kanga more frightening. Continue reading →

Juicy Stardrop (Part Three)

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Back to the Beginning

(reading time: 1 hour, 26 minutes)

juicytitles

A dark cloud would be just one more uncomfortable bump on any transoceanic flight, but the pilot and copilot couldn’t see it or detect it with their instruments. Even the normal filters of first class team recycling travel, which kept out the riff and for a minor additional fee the raff as well, could do nothing against this particular phenomenon. Continue reading →

Juicy Stardrop (Part One)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 6 Comments

Y2K threatened to destroy the world, all computers to go mad when the year ticked over to 2000, but a solution was found! Now the nineties play over and over again, and things just keep getting better! The guns are off the streets, the ozone hole is patched, the cops are tough on drugs, and competitive recycling is the number one sport in the world.

Life should’ve been perfect for one of its star players, Joey ‘Kanga’ Reuben, but after his best friend was taken from him in the middle of a match he could think of nothing else. It was all the work of those superhuman terrorists, the dastardly Millennials…

(reading time: 1 hour, 6 minutes) (reading time for entire novel: 5 hours, 16 minutes)

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A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Competitive Recycling in the Fifth 1990s

by

Blaine Arcade

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With a robotically chauffeured limousine and enough free soda to raise the Titanic from the depths, nobody could call it a young man’s average Friday night. It was to be the fantastic Friday night characteristic of the reborn Rockford Rendezvous, and this trial run would culminate with the latest tour stop of the sexiest and most fashionable hologram to ever grace the stage and the drifting dust in the beams of the spotlight. Continue reading →

Eyelids of an Aristocrat

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 3 Comments

Everett finds himself trapped underground, prisoner of a most peculiar family, missing their sanity as well as a few other pieces…

(reading time: 54 minutes)

Eyelids of an Aristocrat

by

Blaine Arcade

Overboard

This account exists, in various lengths, a hundred times over, and the world over at that too. I suspect this will be the longest version of it, and the most difficult to stuff in a bottle or box, but I’m going to bury it the deepest as well. It brings me joy to imagine the sense of reward of reading it to be directly proportional to the effort put in to acquire it. Continue reading →

Blaine’s Short Story Blurbs

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 5 Comments

Well, they aren’t quite blurbs, given that these stories are, you know, short, but now that we’ve got descriptions for our book series, books, novella/novelette series, novellas, and novelettes available, it’s time to move onto these.

If you don’t know me, I’m Blaine Arcade, a speculative fiction writing hobbyist, and I write lots of out-there science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy, and some horror.  All of my stories are available here and free to read, so please check them out if you’re interested.  Happy reading!

Jesus has the Wheels

Jesus has come to town in his big black SUV.  He says it’s time for the rapture.  The only problem is that this is white Jesus, and he isn’t so friendly.

Continue reading →

Blaine’s Book Blurbs

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 5 Comments

If any of my speculative fiction nonsense sounds interesting you can check out the whole works here and free of charge.  This post is all my standalone novels and my gamebook, with book series blurbs, novella blurbs, novelette blurbs, novella/novelette series, and short story descriptions found here.

Labor of Ruby and Pearl

A pact struck in the distant future, after mankind has colonized dozens of worlds and diversified into engineered subspecies, saw the death of guns and missiles.  With the new stigma of ‘farcoward’ weapons comes a return of the sword, shield, and bow.

Dana Rudolph is a grumpy travel writer hopping world to world, keeping to himself until date of publishing, when he is pulled into a vast, and surprisingly icky, conspiracy where he must do his best to protect the ‘appearl’, an anomalous learning gem that formed on its own inside a supercomputer.

Follow him and his sword as he teams up with an amazon and a leprechaun to dismantle the supposedly divine, forcing him to confront his traumatic past. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Deals (Finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 49 minutes)

The Deal

The entrance to Peako Dagyvr’s workshop, deep in the stony crevasse of Crosstahl, was sealed off in a most unusual manner. The original door was gone, its frame filled by uneven stones that were held together by a bright, almost luminous, blue adhesive. This barrier had a weak spot, an eye drifting in the adhering slime, but it kept on the interior side. That meant it had to watch everything happening within, occasionally dodging a dagger as it was tossed across the chamber.

Even in the relatively short time since Captain Rob had taken the new recruit Alast there to purchase a weapon, Peako’s output had increased significantly. The walls had always had very little empty space, with shields, spears, and war forks hung everywhere, some even modified into braziers to light the place. It was much more cluttered now, the space shrunk by shields overlapping, like the dermal disorder of a scaly beast. Continue reading →