PODCAST · fiction
Patrick E. McLean
by Weekly short fiction and serial fiction
Short fiction every week and serial novel "A Town Called Nowhere" patrickemclean.substack.com
Episodes
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Nowhere Ch. 22 -- A Stranger Stranger Comes to Town
If Dance only looked at one side of the street it could almost appear that Grantham had gotten back to normal. There had been a rough few days after the fire, but they’d buried the dead, said words over them, and moved on. That didn’t mean that things were good but they could've been a hell of a...
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Nowhere Ch. 21 - From The Ashes
Laura looked out over what was left of the Town of Grantham. Smoldering buildings. Bodies scattered across the street. She realized that this was the reality. This was the natural state. There would be no rescue. Not by Virgil nor anyone else. She felt an urge to lay down with the dead and be at...
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Nowhere Ch. 20 - All Against All
The town burned through the night and when the glow of dawn finally overpowered the glow of the embers, the townspeople who were still alive collapsed to the Earth from weariness. Exhaustion granted a temporary reprieve from the crush of defeat. Half of the town had burned. The north side was...
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Nowhere Ch. 19 - Virgil Strikes the Earth
Virgil had sat in the Nothing with the Shaman for an amount of time he could not identify. He asked, "I saw you dead. How is any of this possible?” “It would be more polite if you asked me a question I could answer,” said Shaman, running his colorless fingers through the colorless grass on which...
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Nowhere Ch. 18 - Up in Flames
Dance crawled until he passed out. He couldn’t say how long he slept, but he was brought back to consciousness by the peaceful sound of his horse cropping grass close to his head. At this he spasmed in fear, rolled onto his back and crab-walked backwards, scrambling for his pistol. His horse…
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Nowhere Ch. 17 --Dance Goes on a Scout
As Sheriff John Dance rode down to the river, Miguel, the Stagecoach agent, came up beside him. Dance gave him a skeptical look, and didn’t have time to get to the question before Miguel said, “I have responsibilities…” Fair enough thought Dance. He cast an eye over Miguel’s horse and rig. It was...
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Nowhere Ch. 16 - A Temple to a Far Older God
Dr. Krupp was terrified. In all his years of selling snake oil throughout the frontier — a figure he often exaggerated, but in truth amounted to no more than three years — he had seen many remarkable things but never had he seen Dr. Bartoleermere the Second’s Magic Elixir actually work. But it…
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Nowhere Ch. 15 - From Nowhere to Nothing
Virgil sat for two days while the strange grass around him died in the heat. At night he slept on the ground and in the daytime he sat once again. At some point, he remembered not when, he unhitched the horses from the wagon and hobbled them. When he drank the last of the water from his canteen...
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Nowhere Ch 14 - Take Your Bullets and Go
As the Sheriff and Pete walked back through town, they could all but smell the fear. Gone was the carelessness of rough men when they weren’t working. Wide eyes peeped out from behind dirty curtains. The piano player in the Occidental Saloon was going at it hammer and tongs, sounding more…
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Nowhere Ch 13 - The Aftermath
For a long time, nobody said anything. They just stood on the bank of the strange new river with the wounded as if the whispering of the water would explain what had happened. All in all, Dance thought, it could have been a whole lot worse and it probably would be before the end. Pete asked, “You...
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Nowhere Ch. 12 - The Attack
Squatting on the bank of the river, Archie offered one word of description for the wooden ship that was bearing down upon the Town of Grantham, “Trireme.” Sheriff Dance paid no attention to Archie. His eyes were locked on an imposing figure at the rail, who was looking down on the town and the...
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Nowhere Ch. 10 & 11 -- Ethan Burdock & Welcome to Town
Chapter 10 — Ethan Burdock To the Northwest of Grantham was the Bar-D ranch, owned by Ethan Burdock. Burdock had carved a 28,000-acre ranch out of Indian territory long before anyone had thought to look for silver in this rough land. More than five thousand head of Longhorn cattle toughed it out...
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Nowhere Ch 9 -- A River in the Morning
Just catching up? Here’s the story so far in ebook and audiobook format If you’re already on board, take a minute to leave a review on Part I on Amazon. — Sheriff John Dance hadn’t slept much. When the night started, they didn’t have any customers, so he sat outside on the porch waiting for the...
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Nowhere Ch 8 - A Hole Through Nothing
The Apache rode until sunset. Then they rode until sunrise. They felt the wind through their hair and the horses pounding the earth, but all they heard was *the song*. In the beginning, they had thought Goyaate had sung the song and they had only kept pace with it. Then they opened their throats...
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Nowhere Ch 7 - The Wager
The saloon was a shoddy-looking two story box of building, made from unfinished boards that had not fared well in the desert sun. Above the awning was a sign, painted directly on the wood that read, “Morning Star Saloon. Jethro Earp, Proprietor.” Jethro was happy to tell all the patrons that he…
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Nowhere Ch 6 - Virgil Gets the Flour
Virgil got into Bisbee late in the afternoon. Outside of Fetterman’s a drunk cowboy was staggering around the street running his mouth at passer-bys. He was young, dumb and mostly harmless, with spurs set low so they would jingle to announce his swagger. From time to time, his friends would hand...
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A Defense of Writing Longhand
I wrote this essay 12 years ago. And there are a lot of things that I used to believe that I don’t believe anymore. But the substance of this essay has become more and more true for me with each passing year. Longhand has become the most productive way for me to write. And in the increasing noise...
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Nowhere Ch 5 - Welcome to the Morning Star
Archie rode uphill through the town, towards the elegant, yet out-of-place Victorian house on the hill. When those in the street and on the porches gawked at his unusual appearance he took pleasure in tipping his pith helmet to them. He passed the Morning Star Saloon on his right, and tucked in...
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Somewhere a Story is Searching for You
Somewhere, out there, a story is searching for you. It fumbles, faceless through the dark. Unknowable, unformed. Newt pads for hands, it whispers questions in the dreams of people you know. Is this nascent thing a love story, a family drama, a gritty crime thriller? It doesn't know yet, so how…
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Nowhere Ch 4 - Trouble with the Stage
The Swing Station was a pile of mud bricks with a thatched roof on the east side of the Mule Mountains. The windows had no glass, only torn curtains that would flutter in their mud sockets on the rare occasions that there was a breeze. But there was no breeze today, and the Bisbee-Grantham…
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Inspiration
Inspiration… that son-of-a-b***h I’m having a problem with inspiration right now. He’s been ducking me. I mean we have this regular arrangement. He shows up and Inspiration, that son-of-a-b***h, has been ducking me. I know what happened. He got all cracked out on the ideas he was supposed to…
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Nowhere Ch 3 - The Sacred Raid
He called them with the same magic that brings the fog in the morning or a thunderstorm on a hot summer afternoon. They came from the reservation. They came from hiding places deep in canyons or high in mountains. They came because he was the War Chief. and before they passed from the world, they...
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What the Rain Brought
The summer was immense. It was so hot that the mud dried in the blasted cracks in the yard as all the crops died. Across the range, cattle moaned as they cropped the dried grass and pawed at the creek bed for water. And still, the sun hammered the earth. Each day they would scan the sky for…
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Nowhere Ch 2 - A Stranger Comes to Town
(Previously: Chapter 1 - A Man Goes on A Journey) The Journal of Archimedes Croryton, July 23rd, 1888 I have been informed that my train has just crossed into Texas and the terrain has already become wilder than I could ever have imagined. The emptiness of these spaces is immense. It seems…
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The Inescapable Gravity of Barfight Scenes
If there was one thing that I wish I knew about writing years ago, it is this: Every story you write comes with obligations. These obligations are driven by expectations. First yours, then the readers. The simple way to say this is “every genre has obligatory scenes.” This is 100% true. If you...
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You Are The Creature that Turns Silence into Words
You and I are the creatures who turn silence into words. And if you find it at all difficult to know what you should do or say: first ask yourself about the silence. Only when you are still, can the voice inside you be heard. Only the blank page can be filled with words. That’s some zen-sounding...
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Nowhere Ch 1 - A Man Goes on a Journey
The team had been hitched to the wagon before dawn, but Virgil still hadn’t left. As Laura Miller folded and sorted the new fabrics for display, she could see the stout draft horses through the front window of the store. They stood, patient as time itself, in the first light of the day. Laura…
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Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter 7
The King paused in the telling. Gripping the sword in his right hand, he rose and threw a few more coals in the brazier with his left. The stable boy, to pretend he wasn’t interested, resumed sharpening his knife. The King returned to his seat and asked the stable boy, “So what happened then, did…
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Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter 6
The men panicked and fled. As Beowulf had foretold, not a one went for a spear. Some dived back into the barrow. Others ran up or down the coast. Only the Dragon was not in a hurry. I remember that dread shape against that grey winter sky, flapping lazily as if it had all the time in the world.…
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Beowulf and the Dragon Chapter 5
At the end of a long, upward march we found an old oak tree on a cliff facing the sea. It was gnarled and had grown at an angle from being blown inland by constant punishment of the sea wind. The base of the trunk was wider than three men could wrap their arms around, while the top of the tree…
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Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter 4
Neither Beowulf nor I slept that night. On his order, I found and woke the Blacksmith and brought him to where the King waited by the forge. Beowulf explained what he wanted. The Blacksmith understood, for it was simple enough, but he protested that the result would be too heavy for a man to…
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Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter 3
If you’ve jumped in the middle, here’s Chapter One. After I killed the wolves, Beowulf took a liking to me, as much of a liking as he took to anyone. It became my job to pour Beowulf’s mead. That first night, very drunk, he said to me, “I would make you my squire, were there any more battles to...
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Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter 2
This is Chapter Two of Beowulf and the Dragon. If you missed it, here’s Chapter One. After I was captured, it was ten years before Beowulf spoke to me again. I would hear him, singing in the mead hall, berating his Thanes even as he showered them with rings. His cries were louder even than the...
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Beowulf and the Dragon: Chapter One
Author’s Note: This is the first in a seven-episode podcast/serialization of Patrick E. McLean’s new novella. It will be available on Amazon and where ever audiobooks are sold shortly. But in the meantime, if you want the whole thing, you can subscribe and get it all right now. Beowulf and the...
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How to Outline Any Story
There is a lot of advice about how to outline a story on the internet, and almost all of it was it was useless, so I stopped trying to wade through it. Like it's just bad content marketing run amok. So I'm going to give you the most useful ways I know to understand stories. The keys to the…
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How It's Written: Batman
Explaining how Batman works written is a huge task. There is simply so much Batman. Since the character's creation in 1939 every conceivable tone has been struck with these stories. And if every twist or variation hasn't been tried, well, almost all of them had. You can read a Batman story in an...
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How It's Written: The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Today I'm going to take you through Shadow Over Innsmouth. To reveal the techniques that make this story, and cosmic horror, work. It's one of Lovecraft's finest, and the unique way all the elements come together at the end is amazing. It's a thing that you feel when you read it, but I'm not…
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How It's Written: Call of Cthuhlu
Today I'm going to talk about H.P. Lovecraft, an author who is one of the great well-springs of the horror genre. And if you want tl/dr on the horror -- there's Poe then Lovecraft and then everybody else. I'm going to dive deep into two stories, Call of Cthulhu and Shadow Over Innsmouth. Shadow...
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How It's Written: The Mandalorian
This week, I'm trying something a little different. In addition to this essay and podcast, I made a video. It’s part of my ongoing series, “How It’s Written” I’m explaining, in detail, why I think the TV show the Mandalorian is so well-written. And to do that, I delve into the world of the…
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The Persuasive Appeal of Dr. Martin Luther King
I really like Martin Luther King day as a holiday. It certainly makes more sense to me than President's Day. Washington and Lincoln were tremendous figures in our history, worthy of study and reflection -- but the world that they were part of seems very distant from the times we live in. But Dr....
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Man Plans and God Laughs
"Man plans and God laughs" is currently, my favorite Yiddish proverb. My second favorite Yiddish proverb is "If Grandma had wheels she would be a wagon." (I just ran into that one searching for the origin of "Man Plans and God laughs") The reason that this is on my mind is that I'm trying to make…
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The War on Santa
2005 was the first time I ever heard the phrase the War on Christmas. Of course, now the "War on Christmas" has been raging or simmering, depending on your perspective, for years. But not depending on my perspective. The way I saw it then and the way I see it now is that we don't make War on...
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Crazy Psycho Murder Tree Ch. 20 - Topper and Edwin
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com
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A Year in Reading
So what did I read this year? Well, I'm all over the place. But I thought I'd take a moment to hit some of the highlights. These are in no particular order. A Gentleman in Moscow By Amor Towles The best book I read this year is A Gentlemen in Moscow by Amor Towles. It's just a wonderful and...
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Crazy Psycho Murder Tree Ch. 19 - Confronting the Boggus
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com
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The Upside of the Apocalypse
I'm a bit sick of the Apocalypse. And on some level, I think everybody is. It's one of the reasons The Mandalorian is so popular. It's a small, self-contained story. Whatever happens, it's not going to be the end of the universe, no StarKiller Base, no White Walkers, nothing like that. The stakes...
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Crazy Psycho Murder Tree Ch. 18 - Raiding the Campus
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com
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To be listened to on Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I think it's the only good one we've got left, primarily because it can't effectively commercialized. It's also a holiday devoted to something I consider to be a virtue -- gratitude. Among other things, it's a time to take a moment to enjoy and reflect on what...
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What Makes a Great Story?
The completely truthful, reasonable, and logical answer is that nobody knows. If people really knew, we would be a lot better at making them. Not just books, but movies, TV shows, plays, really anything that involves narrative art. And we're not. Hollywood bombs all the time with things that...
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Crazy Psycho Murder Tree Ch. 17 -- The Offer
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Patrick E. McLean have?
Patrick E. McLean currently has 89 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Patrick E. McLean about?
Short fiction every week and serial novel "A Town Called Nowhere" patrickemclean.substack.com
How often does Patrick E. McLean release new episodes?
Patrick E. McLean has 89 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Patrick E. McLean?
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Who hosts Patrick E. McLean?
Patrick E. McLean is created and hosted by Weekly short fiction and serial fiction.
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