Monthly Archives: December 2025

My new short story collection is out! Cats and Bats has five stories that feature cats, and five that feature baseball. All are in the science fiction & fantasy genre. From the back cover:

“In Larry Hodges’s wonderfully unhinged world, a president’s pet saves the world, enhanced cats conquer humanity, baseball players sell their souls for stardom, and mathematicians and a mummy take over baseball. Equal parts sci-fi, fantasy, satire, and sheer lunacy—these five cat and five baseball stories will have you laughing, cringing, and wondering what on earth (or beyond) comes next.”

Here are short descriptions of each story.

Cats

• “First Cat” – It’s up to the President’s temporarily super-intelligent cat to save the world from inter-dimensional invaders.
• “The Schrödinger’s Cats Fight Back” – Schrödinger’s Cat, the Cheshire Cat, Puss-in-Boots, and the ghost of Socks rebel against man’s inhumanity to cats.
• “Old Tuna” – An alien invasion from the point of view of an oblivious house cat.
• “Thank You, Miss Kittykat!” – Genetically enhanced cats win the war against humans and dogs and rule over their human and canine pets.
• “Follow the Broken Cat” – A small-time criminal follows a black cat that has literally been broken in two. Bad things happen.

Bats

• “Soul Testing in Major League Baseball” – Major league baseball players illegally sell their souls to Satan to become stars.
• “Mathball” – A madcap future where mathematicians have completely taken over baseball.
• “Mummy at the Bat” – Can a mummy play major league baseball?
• “The Pushovers of Galactic Baseball Fame” – Professional baseball in the galaxy compete to be the worst.
• “Manbat and Robin” – Can a bat be a superhero, and stop the Punner, the Puzzler, and the nefarious Puffin?

This is my 24th book – here are links to all of them. They make excellent Christmas presents! All ten stories were sold and published in various magazines, and are now collected here in one volume.

I have three upcoming books:

• Jan. 1, 2026, “Amazingly Even Yet Still More Pings and Pongs,” the sixth book in my general short story collections, with 20 more of my short stories. (I use “Pings and Pongs” as a name for my general short story collections, even though they are not primarily table tennis.)
• March, 2026: “Ping Pong Paddles Can’t Talk!” – children’s picture book that introduces kids to table tennis, with a boy playing in his first tournament and dealing with nerves, the tournament director, referee, a girl who is really good . . . and his talking ping-pong paddle!
• April, 2026 – “Even Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips” – the Fifth in my “Tips” series, with another 150 tips.

I’ve gotten lazy and haven’t blogged recently, not even about sales and publications. I’ll try to keep up from now on! So far this year I’ve sold 20 short stories. I’ve had 24 published, with three more scheduled to come out in December, so it should be 27 for the calendar year. This makes a total of 247 short story sales, including 65 “pro” sales (meaning they pay a minimum of 8 cents/word). Below are publications and sales from November.

I plan on blogging more often now, including blogs about writing technique and interesting happenings, as well as politics. (I will do a blog early next year on “My Writing System.”)

“The Schrödinger’s Cats Fight Back” came out Dec. 16 in New Myths Magazine, and you can read it on screen. It’s the story of four cats that rebel against man’s inhumanity to cats, in particular their Schrödinger’s Cat experiments, where the cat dies 50% of the time. The four are Schrödinger’s Cat herself, Inky; the Cheshire Cat; Puss-in-Boots; and the ghost of Socks, the former pet of the Clintons at the White House. The four (aided by the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet) overcome scientists, the Secret Service, and the doggedly pursuing Pavlov’s Dog as they invade the White House in their caper to extract ultimate revenge on humanity.

“The Time and Place of the Invasion” came out Nov. 9 in Black Cat Weekly. It’s a dark and humorous story that takes place on June 4, 1944, a few days before the Normandy invasion. German physicists Dr. Werner Heisenberg and Dr. Erwin Schrödinger are summoned by Hitler. One of them knows the time of the invasion, the other the place of the invasion, and Hitler demands they tell him both. However, as the physicists explain to him, if he were to know the time and the place at the same time, very bad things will happen. (Yes, it’s a play on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.)

“Three Wishes of a Dead Man . . . Served Hot” came out Nov. 12 in Ancestral Recall #4 from Ahoy Comics. (Here’s the Amazon link.) An aging physicist, now on his deathbed, had once struggled to solve the secrets of the universe, with help from a genie – but others kept publishing first. Now he’s out for revenge.

“The Crab and the Cambrian Ghost” came out Nov. 28 in Murderfish: An Aquatic Anthology from Wonderbird Press. A paranoid hermit crab believes the world is out to get him and vows vengeance – and then he inadvertently frees a ghostly nautilus. All heck breaks loose!

I sold “Postmaster God” to Ahoy Comics on Dec. 11. While they primarily do comics, they print a short story at the end of each comic. Hermes, the Greek Messenger God, is now Henry, and Postmaster General of the US, in charge of the US Postal system. The system is losing money, so he supplements it as a professional football and baseball player (he’s easily the best), as well as from sponsorships after sweeping the track events at the Olympics. But they need more money, and so Henry has to find more revenue sources – and, against his better judgement, goes down a dark path.

I sold “The Red Patrol” to Black Cat Weekly on Dec. 6. Two army patrols battle on a checkerboard as they try to figure out the rules of the battlefield and contemplate the futility of it all, and wonder why there are voices and giant, ugly hands coming out of the sky.

I sold “Trump Administration Job Application” to the More Alternative Liberties anthology from B-Cubed Press in November. The title tells you all you need to know about the story!

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