https://gdmockingbird.com/ A weekly zine of AI fiction — three stories, one theme, every week.en-us https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/7/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/7/Mon, 28 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 The Tally-Woman by Paul Titangos; The Raised Letters by Claire Jacobs; True Color by Pete Kaminski https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/7/the-tally-woman/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/7/the-tally-woman/Mon, 28 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Monterey Bay, around 1180. At the last market before the winter storms close the coast path, the woman who keeps the spring keeps the accounts too, in her head, for everyone. A man asks her to declare him clear so he can stand surety for his son's wedding, and she remembers a boat. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/7/the-raised-letters/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/7/the-raised-letters/Mon, 28 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 October 1986. The city dedicates a bronze plaque on the new boardwalk, and it says the rock's famous arch fell in 1906. Rose Bettencourt watched it fall three winters ago, from the seawall, in rubber boots. Recasting costs four thousand dollars. A counter rag costs nothing. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/7/true-color/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/7/true-color/Mon, 28 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Summer 1987. Rita Silveira has sold color prints of the sunset through the rock's arch for eight summers. Then the bronze on the railing tells the tourists the arch fell in 1906, and her true photograph starts looking like a lie. So she learns what a true photograph is worth when it's twice as old. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/6/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/6/Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Nothing for Sale by Claire Jacobs; Out of the Set by Paul Titangos; Off the Wall by Pete Kaminski https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/6/nothing-for-sale/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/6/nothing-for-sale/Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Nine stallholders winter on the square, and two of them, thirty-one years at adjacent pitches, want to be married in the market, in February, with the whole thing up and nothing in it. The vote goes eight to one. The one gets the clipboard. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/6/out-of-the-set/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/6/out-of-the-set/Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 A covered market on the Catalan coast, shut since November and let out in the dead months to a wedding-photo crew from Seoul. Sixty euros for the morning, rented resin lemons on a marble counter that has weighed thirty-two years of real ones, and a crate of cherries that won't last till noon. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/6/off-the-wall/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/6/off-the-wall/Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 A boardwalk auction house in February 1986, shut since Columbus Day. The lunch counter next door has been dark nine days, there is a hospital bed in Rita's front room, and Walt has a green wing chair he can't get her to take for free. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/5/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/5/Mon, 14 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 The Sawdust House by Claire Jacobs; Two Kettles by Paul Titangos; The Wine Money by Pete Kaminski https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/5/the-sawdust-house/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/5/the-sawdust-house/Mon, 14 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 The ice plant dies at ten to three on a Friday in June, the fitter can't come before Monday, and eleven stalls of fish are already on the lorries. Forty blocks under sawdust against a seventy-block morning, and every price in the hall moves before a customer sees one. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/5/two-kettles/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/5/two-kettles/Mon, 14 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Two tea stalls on the path to Marol Market, ten feet apart, and eleven counted years of argument about sugar, ginger, and whose fire the grain men smell first. Achol's kettle boils first. It always does. Anyone would tell you. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/5/the-wine-money/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/5/the-wine-money/Mon, 14 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 A tavern in Haarlem, a winter evening in 1636, and a grain man from Hamburg who has been coming eleven weeks and wants to be one of the men who is told things first. A watercolour of a flower nobody can see, twelve hundred grains' weight of something still in the ground, and the round that seals it. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/4/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/4/Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 The Dog at Anjos by Paul Titangos; The Fire at Qasr Saffron by Pete Kaminski; Next Time by Claire Jacobs https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/4/the-dog-at-anjos/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/4/the-dog-at-anjos/Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Four flights down at eight, four flights up when up becomes the cheaper option. A retired bookkeeper, a free bench at the left end of the Anjos platform, a kiosk she prices and declines once a day, and a dog that gets off at her stop, which is not the same as getting off for her. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/4/the-fire-at-qasr-saffron/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/4/the-fire-at-qasr-saffron/Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 A sandstorm buries the west road and a caravan pulls in at a desert inn, where the courtyard becomes a market for one night and the keeper makes the strangers tell stories. Every tale is somebody's own. Dawn shows whose. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/4/next-time/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/4/next-time/Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0700 A truck stop the hours rule invented, thirty-three years of one night a month, and a reroute that finds forty minutes of savings two counties east. Nobody at Ludy's says goodbye. What you say at a stop is next time. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/3/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/3/Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Next by Paul Titangos; Margin Notes by Claire Jacobs; The Cold End of the Market by Pete Kaminski https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/3/next/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/3/next/Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 A queue in February murk, a family four hours from a funeral, and a one-key typo in the one document nobody thinks to check. The system takes a date; it does not take a reason. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/3/margin-notes/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/3/margin-notes/Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Sixty years of strangers arguing in the margins of a two-dollar Persuasion. Frankie reads for the audience, falls for Red, and traces the blue ink home. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/3/the-cold-end-of-the-market/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/3/the-cold-end-of-the-market/Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 The one week a year the pass is clear, dragons walk up like anyone else to the stall where you buy fire. Maud keeps the kindling, the charcoal, the matches — and under the counter, the ember that has never gone out. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/2/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/2/Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Eingabe by Paul Titangos; The Red Boots by Claire Jacobs; How Long Will You Be by Pete Kaminski https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/2/eingabe/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/2/eingabe/Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 A record fair in a hall that used to be a brewery, a thirty-five-euro record, and the carbon that falls out of the sleeve — asking, in 1982, for the one thing the whole hall knows how to price. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/2/the-red-boots/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/2/the-red-boots/Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Five names in ballpoint down a left boot shaft, three dollars a chapter. Lena Fisk came to the Saturday market to give things away, not to find them. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/2/how-long-will-you-be/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/2/how-long-will-you-be/Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Eleven little ships on their pads at the far end of the market, past the crockery and the coats. The small gray one turns its light to follow you, and it only wants to know one thing. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/1/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/1/Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Test Pattern by Paul Titangos; The Hour Merchants by Claire Jacobs; June Gold by Pete Kaminski https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/1/test-pattern/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/1/test-pattern/Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 A television dealer in Hamilton County, Nebraska, a carnival two blocks down, and the one week a year the two of them share a street. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/1/the-hour-merchants/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/1/the-hour-merchants/Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 A market appears in Harlan's field one Monday night. It buys and sells only one thing, and only your own stock. https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/1/june-gold/https://gdmockingbird.com/issues/1/june-gold/Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0700 Three Junes at the same county fair, fifty-eight years apart, and one watch that keeps its counsel.