Brain Squalls

We’ve spent a few episodes talking about vampire society and the how and why of the reality show they’ve decided to launch (this season is sequential with connected episodes so you’re going to want to check out 1-3 of Season 3 before you dive into this one). Now it’s time to talk about a few of the humans who will appear on the show. We, of course, end up on a tangent or two as well. Make sure to listen to this episode to the very end to hear EV Knight’s diatribe on Douchebags. It is not to be missed. We promise. Other than that, we create a few “social media influencers” who make their way onto the reality show that the vamps are producing. It’s a 52 week run and the goal and prize is pure fame. Who wouldn’t want to get involved in a production like that? Even if you…might…die…

We went into this episode with the idea of making the rules for our Vamps. What tropes do we want and what do we skip? We did some of that, but also expanded on the back story and did some more world building. Matt got us hung up on farming humans some more, too. He’s a little obsessed. Season 3 is getting to be dark and fun for us as we delve into the idea of Vampires being among us, how they govern themselves, and why the young, upstart Americans are the most in a hurry to come out to the humans as their superiors.

Last week we felt like we were shot out of a cannon with this new subject matter: What if vampires are real and they take advantage of Covid and our cavalier American attitude to come out of hiding and announce that they are among us and that they do, in fact, kill us sometimes? There is A LOT of meat on these bones, and today we picked just a slice of it. This episode focuses on just a little bit of the back story of the vampire culture. Do they have a government? Do they hunt us in the wild? Do they farm us? Why would they come out at all?   We have a lot of fun diving into this and hope you have fun listening in and want to join in the fun! We are back on a weekly schedule and we usually record in the afternoon/evening. If we can work you into the schedule - we will! Let’s party! We hit 2,000 downloads for the show this week and that may not sound like a lot, but we are excited and hope that a few more folks get into it. Whether you want to spark your creativity or join in on ours, let’s play! It’s like a coloring book but a story intstead :D

We are so terribly sorry that it has been so long since we put some new material up. We just decided that Season 2 was a short one and got sidelined by the old Pandemic, and that we are going to start our new normal with Season 3 now. The prompt that EV came up with was simple: What if one of the contestants on Too Hot To Handle was a vampire? Holy Shit did we run with that! The episode kicks off with a good bit of tangents and housekeeping, but we do get into the meat of this prompt and it gets way out of hand - in a good way.

OK. We got a little obsessed with The Tiger King and we accidentally wrote some future historic fiction about what Joe Exotic’s life might be like after he gets out of jail. It all started with The Writer’s Toolbox supplying 3 prompts: “A Beekeeping Outfit”, “They were all the same, I decided.”, and “Buys a New Wardrobe” You can see how we got to Joe right away, what with him being at the top of the cultural radar right now. Whether you’ve seen that show or not, check out this crazy episode of our little show and let us know what you think of our “plans” for good old Joe….and Carol.

Today we spend a few minutes talking about quarantine life and our fun times with the all new Coronavirus, then launch into another big old session of world building, led by Rory’s Story Cubes. We sort of ignored the rules a little bit, but it turned out fun for us, getting the direction of “Keyhole, Footprint, Apple”, we concocted an old home with a stocked library and a mysterious keyhole in the wall. A young girl moves in with her parents and is immediately left home alone for most of the day as they are stuck going to work as Essential Employees. When she finds the keyhole, it opens up a fantasy world with adorable creatures and idyllic landscapes. But, where did it come from? Why is it there? Listen to this episode and find out what happens when kids are stuck at home with only stories to keep them company.

Ever in search of a new prompt, today we cracked open Weird Words - A Lovecraftian Lexicon and chose a page to get us started. The only word on that page to work with was Ivory Gate. It’s the gate through which false dreams come to men from the cave of Hypnos. It was a little bit of a slow start, but then we got to thinking about a man named Roman Thompson who wanted to make sure that everyone had good dreams. He made a machine that could manage your dreams his life’s work. It was a smashing success and the world was ever in his debt, until someone figured out how to monetize it many times over…and worse. We spend a solid hour on world building for the framework of what could easily be a sprawling series fit for graphic novel, novel, TV, or movies. We’re not trying to brag here, it’s actually kind of a cop-out. We try to write one story in every episode, but this one turned out to be more of a universe in which many stories can happen. Enjoy the beginnings of the company known as Somnus.

Alex Josey has an accident at a French ski lodge resulting in a fall to his death...or so we think. When he lands, 200 feet below, he slides into a deep, deep crack in the Earth where he is "healed" by the inhabitants down below. This episode is inspired by a combination of prompts: The Stupid Deaths board game and Pitchstorm card game. Our cats make many appearances as do the doors of a couple of kids' rooms. That's what happens when the "studio" is in the middle of the house.  We had a long break between episodes that featured a trip to Florida and totaling a car in Wisconsin. We've been busy bees!

Today we connected with Victor Cypert, one of EV’s cohorts from her Seton Hill University days, to craft a tale that spans centuries about a girl who would be sacrificed to a cult but for her mother’s protection and education. The ritual she was subjected to left her body in a state of very slow aging and has allowed her a unique opportunity to see the world become the monster. Victor is an expert on cults, holds multiple Master’s Degrees, and is on the way to his first PhD. We tried not to be too jealous that he’s in 70 degree weather in the South while we freeze in the North by focusing our fiction in Florida. Enjoy our tale of a Moonchild from Florida named Luna who can talk to ghosts, and her shifting perspective on the world she knew vs the world of today.

Today we used a game to get our creativity going and it worked out great! We used the Pitchstorm Creature Feature Edition to get started on this episode, and came up with a really creepy, horrifying tale of triplets who became twins and how life works out for them. We were given characters and a basic plot, as well as one “note” to follow after we had been working on the story for 10 minutes. There are some intersections with The Green Mile, Stand By Me, and some other existing stories. In the end we did come up with an original tale that is loaded with interesting, intersecting characters in a 1920s or 30s backdrop. Check it out and let us know what you think of Helen, Blanche, Sophie, and the lives they lead. Would you have done something different with these prompts? We are pretty sure you would have, and that is what makes it so much fun!

EV Knight is a fabulous author and podcast co-host (and Matt writes all the episode descriptions :D ) but she’s not terribly confident going into an episode that she knows will be a Science Fiction story. As a matter of fact, she’s so unconfident that this was supposed to be episode 3 of season 1! We kept it on the shelf for a while and decided now was the time to get The 3G Corporation out into the world. It is about a parasitic race of beings on one planet and Baby Boomer type aliens from another planet vying for control of resources and Ray Guns! Whether you like Sci-Fi or not, check it out. This episode really gets into the roots of what we set out to do - expose the steps of storytelling and world building. At least one of us thinks it turned out to be a really fun story with some original ideas and relevant topics to our world today. What do you think?

We had a slew of tech issues trying to record this episode and ended up with a lesser quality audio on our end than usual. Gwendolyn Sounds great! We are coming through a laptop mic rather than our studio mics - but the content is great, so we went with it! We had a great time coming up with a story about a miner who gets involved in community theater…sort of. It was fun for the 3 of us to weave a short tale about tragedy and love and a few steps in between. Gwendolyn tells us about her new work, The Invention of Ghosts and tells us about a story she just finished reading, Luminous Body by Brooke Warra. EV just finished reading Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias. We certainly suggest you check out all three. Enjoy Episode 2 of Season 2 - we had a great time making it!

We kick off season 2 with an exploration into the absurd. Our guest, multi Bram Stoker Award Winner, professor of Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University, and Mentor to our co-host, EV Knight, Dr Mike Arnzen leads the way with a prompt we never could have come up with on our own. We get into a couple different variants on the idea of the Toys For Tots boxes that can be found all over the place leading into the holiday season and what else they might be doing there. If this episode teaches you anything, it’s that no idea is too weird to look into, and that once you do get weird, the fun part can be figuring out how to tie it all back in to real life somehow. Enjoy our first foray into guests on the show! Season 2 has more on the schedule and we are immensely excited to bring them to you!

For the final episode of our first season we demonstrate our telepathic powers while we tell the story of a Firefighter, a Flirt, and a young man who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. We set out to write a spooky Christmas ghost story, but ended up with an endearing tale of understanding, empathy, forgiveness, and love. We tried to be scary, but Mountain Dew Merry Mashup just had us feeling too damn good!

Finally! We are back at prompts and is it fun! Matt decided to use the Wu-Tang name generator to inspire this story and it did not disappoint. EV and Matt switch roles for a while so she can be overconfident and he can be dubious. In the end we come up with a brand new way to end civilization, cooked up by the mind of a young lady who has had it with the kids’ table. If you want to know how Thanksgiving Dinner can be rolled into the end of life as we know it, you’re going to have to check out our penultimate episode for season one. It’s a great way to get in the holiday spirit…we promise :D

Levi’s adventure in the woods comes to an end in this short episode. We discuss his reunion with his family, the arcs of all the major characters, and how well we stuck to our original concepts and ideas. This was a really fun project for both of us, and if you’re a creative type, we’d love to see your concept work or hear about what you’d have done with the story. What do these characters look like? Are they old school Disney looking animals or are they ultra-realistic? We mention Pixar about 1,000 times over the whole series on this story, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have a look and feel of its own. Next week, we are SUPER excited to get back to our roots - PROMPTS! We are really geared up to see where they take us for our Thanksgiving special and our Xmas special to round out episodes 19 and 20 of season 1.

We are almost to the exciting conclusion of Levi’s journey through the woods with all his new animal pals. Wilson named him and wants to keep him. Colonel Norris seems to know everything, but maybe he doesn’t. Leesh comes to a very startling conclusion when she learns about Levi’s artistic talent. We also go off on several long tangents, including the idea for a brand new podcast with and for young kids about telling scary stories and letting their minds guide the whole thing! We have a pretty good time, despite some weird audio technical difficulty - so please bear with us and we hope it is still listenable for you. You are going to want to catch the whole episode, since we manage to keep the tangents going right to the very last seconds.

Levi’s journey continues this week, as tensions mount between Lenny and the rest of the woodland creatures. Lenny hatches a scheme to get himself the Alpha spot in his pack and Wilson lets him know that Levi will not be a part of any of that - ever. We discuss the Domino Effect vs The Butterfly Effect, and wonder what a Verbena is. Can you help us find out? Oh, Wilson decides to give Levi a name too - since he doesn't know he has one already.

This is the 4th installment of our full screenplay writing project. We introduce some new characters in the last couple episodes and start talking about who we would love to have as voice actors for the cast when this definitely gets picked up and made by the fine folks at Disney/Pixar. They need an animal movie about a deaf boy in the UP, don't they?

As we continue Levi's journey through the woods with his new friends, he gets to try finding his family with the turtles, the squirrels and chipmunks, and Craig, the sneaky raccoon who seems to always be up to no good. We get a little more insight as to why Wilson is so crabby all the time, and learn about the all-knowing nature of Colonel Norris - the wise porcupine.  Oh, an industrious beaver makes his way into the story too! Thanks for sticking with us as real life got in the way of our podcast for a couple weeks. We are back at it with all of our usual antics, but now with "on the fly" fact checking!  Holy Technology!

This week we continue on Levi and his family’s adventure into the woods, and all of the woodland characters he meets. There’s Wilson the bear, Colonel Norris the Porcupine, Sharon and Karen the White Tail Deer…and so many more! The story really takes shape this week as we finish up the opening scene and Levi’s first night in the woods.He even gets to take his first adventure with an animal and it’s fraught with peril. Let us know what you think of Part 2 and where you’d like to see the story go.

For the remainder of this season, we’re trying something new: a story idea we’ve been kicking around for a while. It's a full length family friendly screen play a la Pixar about a deaf little boy lost in the woods. This week, we work on character sketches, a plot overview, and layout for the rest of the season. You get to meet Sharon and Karen the whitetail deer, and Colonel Norris, the kind old porcupine, along with Levi the Stomper Cub and his family.

A coloring book takes shape as we use 3 tarot cards as prompts in this episode.  We see Donaldo, the prince on the way home from slaying the dragon and winning the princess - but all is not well in this scenario. He's a puffed up trophy hoarder and she is a beauty with a secret.  Perhaps the squire, Oswald, can determine the next logical step as he steers them toward the bridge and its magical guard, Trolliver.  We had SO MUCH fun with this episode and we didn't know where it was taking us until it got there!  if you're any good at drawing outlines for others to color in, please CHECK IT OUT!  We are offering a high bounty for a coloring book that you should get published. We will even help!

In honor of the upcoming release of Stephen King’s It sequel, we put a story together with a monster. This one is a little different, though. Imagine if you had an imaginary friend who stuck with you through your adult life in a good way. You’re not lonely, you’re imaginative. One day, you get a real friend and your imaginary friend gets jealous. Now what? Check out this week’s episode to find out what we thought might happen if this were to be your life - the life of a librarian lottery winner - who happens to stick with Puck, his imaginary, childhood friend.

In this episode we mashup prompts from two different games. We get our character from Snake Oil and three random items from the Find It cylinder. From there we end up on a wild ride through Build-A-Bear, zombies, and the tragic power of grief. At its heart, today's is a very emotional tale of a distraught mother. On it's surface, the story is about a murderous zombie teddy bear with a human heart.  A young mother loses a child and does what she can to cope, but it doesn't go well.  She relies on a rookie detective to help set her back on a path to living well while his veteran partner just tries his damndest to kill all the zombies. We're very proud of how this episode came out and hope you love it.  Let us know! Tweet, Facebook, Instagram, email - we want to hear your thoughts, opinions and reactions. What would you have done differently? What do you like? What don't you like? We want to hear from you.

In this episode we recap our trip to just outside St Louis and back to pick up some adorable hairless Guinea Pigs, a fantastic live show with Jetty Rae, and a family outing to see the Scary Stories to tell in the Dark movie as we lead in to our own Scary Story. Thanks very much to all who submitted elements of scary stories for us, especially to Hailey Piper for suggesting "Footprints that are kind of human, but wrong", which we drew as an element of our story.  We also chose "summer camp" as a setting, and "elderly couple who live next door" as the "bad guys".   This story shaped up quickly as EV wove a tale of camp counselor shenanigans and camp kid discovery.  Listen to find out what happens when they find the tracks, who left them, and what's in store for the church camp kids this week!

What happens when Mr Flufferbutt goes missing and the whole town of Kinsleyville loses its favorite mascot?  Does Francois get his title back as the town favorite? Does Hollywood come back to town for The Rex In Space show?  Who knows?  All we know is that the Tall Tales board game provided for a really fun set of prompts for this week's episode, and we came up with a lot of character names that we should have written down.  So, strap in, listen up, and find out if Joel and Angie can crack the case of the missing chinchilla!

EV wanted to take a crack at a dark fairy tale in this episode and Matt came along for the ride into a Pixie garden that was planted by an old witch.  We managed to weave a story about Pixies vs Witches that has a neat little twist.  Oh, we name drop everyone in Hollywood just hoping that a friend of theirs will listen and let them know how SUPER CREATIVE we are! That's right, Michael Bay - Matt wants to see a Pixie/Witch war with big explosions!

We manage to turn a couple of cards from a deck of prompts into a story of rival drug dealing and manufacturing organizations dueling over a nearly superhuman pawn who really just wants love, and to fit in.  There's a lot of action and we struggle a little with some of the details in the climactic scene. Does the protagonist escape?  Is the money gone?  Take a listen and let us know what you think of The Little Cartel.

Donald has a very bad time with a smelly microwave.

Corky tried to be an actor until recently, when he decided to try his hand and being a clown that does a little stand-up and magic for kids.  He's a good guy with a good heart and is very excited for his gig at Thad's birthday. Thad's mom's boyfriend Tony isn't too into it, so they choose him to go in the Vanishing Box. What happens next comes as a shock to almost everyone...For this story we use Story Time Dice ( https://www.amazon.com/Imagination-Generation-Create-Adventure-Storytelling/dp/B00Q3BLKE0 ) to get us started. Let us know what you love, what you hate, and what you would have done differently.  #bonytony

Join us for a mystery inspired by University Game's Stupid Deaths. Our mystery path is guided by Victoria Thompson's lecture on mystery writing (www.victoriathompson.com) that EV Knight attended as a student at Seton Hill Universty.

Join us on our maiden voyage as we take a randomly selected prompt from Dr. Michael Arnzen that he selected from his book, Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side, and turn it into a story that is laced with delightful 90s culture.

We talk about ourselves and each other so you can get to know who we are and see how we use prompts to get stories started.

We thought we would get a preview out to you so you knew what we are going to do with the Brain Squalls podcast.  We will have Episode 1 - Warm Vanilla Sugar, out for you on July 1st.  Until then, you can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @brainsqualls.  We are super excited to flex our creative muscles with you.  Better come in, there's a story brewin'!