Podcasts about Creative writing

Gaar Adams joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about living amongst and depicting queer and migrant communities in the Gulf states, falling in love with Arabic literature and translation, the undeniable parallels between queerness and migration, exploring subversive acts, capturing ourselves in less than flattering ways, combating self-censorship, concern with how loved ones might perceive us, protecting our memory, calibrating interiority, writing into periods of discomfort, the importance of chosen families, transcribing and organizing vast amounts of material and interviews, allowing for a multiplicity of voices, intentional interrogation of stories that aren't being told, and his new book Guest Privileges: Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East.   Also in this episode: -the fallacy of the solo artist -knowing when to let go -protecting our memory   Books mentioned in this episode: Notes on a Foreign Country by Suzy Hansen  Sea State: A Memoir by Tabitha Lasley Maximum City by Suketu Mehta The Pink Line by Mark Gevisser   Gaar Adams is the author of Guest Privileges: Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East, longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. His reporting from the Middle East and South Asia has been featured in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Rolling Stone, Bloomberg, VICE, Slate, and elsewhere. He received his Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Glasgow and currently teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Hull. He lives in London, UK.   Connect with Gaar: Website: https://gaaradams.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gaar.adams/ X: https://x.com/gaaradams   – Ronit's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer's Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories.  She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit's Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social   Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

What makes a character unforgettable? It's not just quirks or dialogue. It's personality. Your characters' personalities shape their arcs, influence their voices, drive their goals, and and connect plot and theme into a cohesive whole. In this episode, we'll explore why personality is the secret ingredient to compelling storytelling and how you can use it to create characters who resonate with readers long after the final page. You'll Learn: 3 reasons personality is the foundation of great characters 4 ways personality drives storytelling (arc, voice, conflict, theme) 10 practical tips for weaving personality into your plot, dialogue, and arcs How to use tools like the Enneagram and MBTI to stress-test your character development Whether you're outlining your next novel or revising a draft, this episode will help you unlock deeper, more authentic storytelling through the lens of personality.

On this episode of Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, host Avik speaks with Joni Marie Iraci—a registered nurse turned award-winning novelist—about late-life reinvention, earning an MFA in her 60s, and the craft behind her thriller Vatican Daughter. Joni breaks down how life experience fuels better storytelling, why continuing education can restart a creative career, and how rigorous research (including miles of walking Rome) elevates fiction. We also discuss mindset shifts from “victim” to “survivor,” practical marketing realities for authors, and how to keep your brain—and courage—active at any age. This is a direct, no-fluff playbook for midlife career change, creative discipline, and purpose.   About the guest:   Joni Marie Iraci is an author and former registered nurse who returned to college later in life, graduated from Sarah Lawrence, and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. She writes page-turning, research-rich fiction centered on resilient women, including Vatican Daughter.   Key takeaways: It's not “too late”: returning to school and embracing new work in your 50s–60s can accelerate creative growth. Leverage lived experience—humor, perspective, and resilience—to write more authentic stories. Practical path: continuing-education programs, steady writing practice, and peer feedback (younger peers can also help with tech). Research that breathes: site walks in Rome/Venice and primary-source study make settings feel real. Fact in fiction: historical events (e.g., 19th-century papal kidnappings) can inform compelling plots when handled responsibly. Craft note: give readers “reprieve scenes” (food, place, texture) to balance thriller intensity. Marketing is work: social media, endorsements, and reader outreach are part of an author's job. Mindset shift: write women who survive, not women defined by victimhood. Community matters: mentorship for emerging writers and asking boldly (blurbs, intros) opens doors. Cognitive wellness: keep learning, reading, and creating to sustain a sharp, purposeful mind.   How to connect with Joni   Website/contact form: Joni mentioned listeners can reach her via the contact page on her official author website - https://www.jonimarieiraci.com/  (search “Joni Marie Iraci” to find it). Books: Look up Vatican Daughter by Joni Marie Iraci on your preferred retailer.   Want to be a guest on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life? DM on PM - Send me a message on PodMatch DM Me Here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/avik   Disclaimer: This video is for educational and informational purposes only. The views expressed are the personal opinions of the guest and do not reflect the views of the host or Healthy Mind By Avik™️. We do not intend to harm, defame, or discredit any person, organization, brand, product, country, or profession mentioned. All third-party media used remain the property of their respective owners and are used under fair use for informational purposes. By watching, you acknowledge and accept this disclaimer.   Healthy Mind By Avik™️ is a global platform redefining mental health as a necessity, not a luxury. Born during the pandemic, it's become a sanctuary for healing, growth, and mindful living. Hosted by Avik Chakraborty—storyteller, survivor, wellness advocate—this channel shares powerful podcasts and soul-nurturing conversations on: • Mental Health & Emotional Well-being• Mindfulness & Spiritual Growth• Holistic Healing & Conscious Living• Trauma Recovery & Self-Empowerment With over 4,400+ episodes and 168.4K+ global listeners, join us as we unite voices, break stigma, and build a world where every story matters.

Matt Forbeck is all that and so much more. He grew up in Wisconsin as what he describes as a wimpy kid, too short and not overly healthy. He took to gaming at a pretty early age and has grown to be a game creator, author and award-winning storyteller.   Matt has been designing games now for over 35 years. He tells us how he believes that many of the most successful games today have stories to tell, and he loves to create some of the most successful ones. What I find most intriguing about Matt is that he clearly is absolutely totally happy in his work. For most of Matt's career he has worked for himself and continues today to be an independent freelancer.   Matt and his wife have five children, including a set of quadruplets. The quadruplets are 23 and Matt's oldest son is 28 and is following in his father's footsteps.   During our conversation we touch on interesting topics such as trust and work ethics. I know you will find this episode stimulating and worth listening to more than once.     About the Guest:   Matt Forbeck is an award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author and game designer of over thirty-five novels and countless other books and games. His projects have won a Peabody Award, a Scribe Award, and numerous ENnies and Origins Awards. He is also the president of the Diana Jones Award Foundation, which celebrates excellence in gaming.    Matt has made a living full-time on games and fiction since 1989, when he graduated from the Residential College at the University of Michigan with a degree in Creative Writing. With the exception of a four-year stint as the president of Pinnacle Entertainment Group and a year and a half as the director of the adventure games division of Human Head Studios, he has spent his career as an independent freelancer.   Matt has designed collectible card games, roleplaying games, miniatures games, board games, interactive fiction, interactive audiobooks, games for museum installations, and logic systems for toys. He has directed voiceover work and written short fiction, comic books, novels, screenplays, and video game scripts and stories. His work has been translated into at least 15 languages.   His latest work includes the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game Core Rulebook, the Spider-Verse Expansion, Monster Academy (novels and board game), the Shotguns & Sorcery 5E Sourcebook based on his novels, and the Minecraft: Roll for Adventure game books. He is the father of five, including a set of quadruplets. He lives in Beloit, Wisconsin, with his wife and a rotating cast of college-age children. For more about him and his work, visit Forbeck.com.   Ways to connect with Matt:   Twitter: https://twitter.com/mforbeck Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forbeck Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/forbeck.com Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mforbeck Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mforbeck/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/forbeck/ Website: https://www.forbeck.com/     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset today. We get to play games. Well, not really, but we'll try. Our guest is Matt Forbeck, who is an award winning author. He is a game designer and all sorts of other kinds of things that I'm sure he's going to tell us about, and we actually just before we started the the episode, we were talking about how one might explore making more games accessible for blind and persons with other disabilities. It's, it's a challenge, and there, there are a lot of tricks. But anyway, Matt, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.   Matt Forbeck ** 02:02 Well, thank you, Michael for inviting me and having me on. I appreciate it.   Speaker 1 ** 02:06 I think we're going to have a lot of fun, and I think it'll work out really well. I'm I am sure of that. So why don't we start just out of curiosity, why don't you tell us kind of about the early Matt, growing up?   Matt Forbeck ** 02:18 Uh, well, I grew up. I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I grew up in a little town called Beloit, Wisconsin, which actually live in now, despite having moved away for 13 years at one point, and I had terrible asthma, I was a sick and short kid, and with the advent of medication, I finally started to be healthy when I was around nine, and Part of that, I started getting into playing games, right? Because when you're sick, you do a lot of sitting around rather than running around. So I did a lot of reading and playing games and things like that. I happen to grow up in the part of the world where Dungeons and Dragons was invented, which is in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, about 30 miles from where I live. And because of that I was I started going to conventions and playing games and such, when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I started doing it when I was a little bit older. I started doing it professionally, and started doing it when I was in college. And amazingly enough, even to my own astonishment, I've made a career out of it.   Speaker 1 ** 03:17 Where did you go to college? I went to the University   Matt Forbeck ** 03:21 of Michigan over in Ann Arbor. I had a great time there. There's a wonderful little college, Beloit College, in my hometown here, and most of my family has gone to UW Milwaukee over the years. My parents met at Marquette in Milwaukee, but I wanted to get the heck out of the area, so I went to Michigan, and then found myself coming back as soon as we started having   Speaker 1 ** 03:42 kids well, and of course, I would presume that when you were at the University of Michigan, you rooted for them and against Ohio State. That was   Matt Forbeck ** 03:50 kind of, you know, if you did it the other way around, they back out of town. So, yeah, I was always kind of astonished, though, because having grown up in Wisconsin, where every sports team was a losing team when I was growing up, including the Packers, for decades. You know, we were just happy to be playing. They were more excuse to have beers than they were to cheer on teams. And I went to Michigan where they were, they were angry if the team wasn't up by two touchdowns. You know, at any point, I'm like, You guys are silly. This is we're here for fun.   Speaker 1 ** 04:17 But it is amazing how seriously some people take sports. I remember being in New Zealand helping the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind. Well now 22 years ago, it's 2003 and the America's Cup had just finished before we got there, and in America beat New Zealand, and the people in New Zealand were just irate. They were complaining that the government didn't put enough money into the design of the boat and helping with the with the yacht and all that. It was just amazing how seriously people take it, yeah,   Matt Forbeck ** 04:58 once, I mean, it becomes a part of your. Identity in a lot of ways, right for many people, and I've never had to worry about that too much. I've got other things on my mind, but there you go.   Speaker 1 ** 05:08 Well, I do like it when the Dodgers win, and my wife did her graduate work at USC, and so I like it when the Trojans win, but it's not the end of the world, and you do need to keep it in perspective. I I do wish more people would I know once I delivered a speech in brether County, Kentucky, and I was told that when I started the speech had to end no later than preferably exactly at 6:30pm not a minute later, because it was the night of the NCAA Basketball Championship, and the Kentucky Wildcats were in the championship, and at 630 everyone was going to get up and leave and go home to watch the game. So I ended at 630 and literally, by 631 I timed it. The gym was empty and it was full to start with.   Matt Forbeck ** 06:02 People were probably, you know, counting down on their watches, just to make sure, right?   Speaker 1 ** 06:06 Oh, I'm sure they were. What do you do? It's, it is kind of fun. Well, so why did you decide to get started in games? What? What? What attracted to you, to it as a young person, much less later on?   Matt Forbeck ** 06:21 Well, I was, yeah, I was an awkward kid, kind of nerdy and, you know, glasses and asthma and all that kind of stuff. And games were the kind of thing where, if you didn't know how to interact with people, you could sit down at a table across them and you could practice. You can say, okay, we're all here. We've got this kind of a magic circle around us where we've agreed to take this one silly activity seriously for a short period of time, right? And it may be that you're having fun during that activity, but you know, there's, there's no reason that rolling dice or moving things around on a table should be taken seriously. It's all just for fun, right? But for that moment, you actually just like Las Vegas Exactly, right? When there's money on the line, it's different, but if you're just doing it for grins. You know, it was a good way for me to learn how to interact with people of all sorts and of different ages. And I really enjoyed playing the games, and I really wanted to be a writer, too. And a lot of these things interacted with story at a very basic level. So breaking in as a writer is tough, but it turned out breaking as a game designer, wasn't nearly his stuff, so I started out over there instead, because it was a very young field at the time, right? D and D is now 50 years old, so I've been doing this 35 years, which means I started around professionally and even doing it before that, I started in the period when the game and that industry were only like 10 or 15 years old, so yeah, weren't quite as much competition in those   Speaker 1 ** 07:43 days. I remember some of the early games that I did play, that I could play, were DOS based games, adventure. You're familiar with adventure? Yeah, oh, yeah. Then later, Zork and all that. And I still think those are fun games. And I the reason I like a lot of those kinds of games is they really make you think, which I think most games do, even though the video even the video games and so on, they they help your or can help your reactions, but they're designed by people who do try to make you think,   Matt Forbeck ** 08:15 yeah. I mean, we basically are designing puzzles for people to solve, even if they're story puzzles or graphic puzzles or sound puzzles or whatever, you know, even spatial puzzles. There the idea is to give somebody something fun that is intriguing to play with, then you end up coming with story and after that, because after a while, even the most most exciting mechanics get dull, right? I mean, you start out shooting spaceships, but you can only shoot spaceships for so long, or you start out playing Tetris, and you only put shapes together for so long before it doesn't mean anything that then you start adding in story to give people a reason to keep playing right and a reason to keep going through these things. And I've written a lot of video games over the years, basically with that kind of a philosophy, is give people nuggets of story, give them a plot to work their way through, and reward them for getting through different stages, and they will pretty much follow you through anything. It's amazing.   Michael Hingson ** 09:09 Is that true Dungeons and Dragons too?   Matt Forbeck ** 09:13 It is. All of the stories are less structured there. If you're doing a video game, you know you the team has a lot of control over you. Give the player a limited amount of control to do things, but if you're playing around a table with people, it's more of a cooperative kind of experience, where we're all kind of coming up with a story, the narrator or the Game Master, the Dungeon Master, sets the stage for everything, but then the players have a lot of leeway doing that, and they will always screw things up for you, too. No matter what you think is going to happen, the players will do something different, because they're individuals, and they're all amazing people. That's actually to me, one of the fun things about doing tabletop games is that, you know, the computer can only react in a limited number of ways, whereas a human narrator and actually change things quite drastically and roll. With whatever people come up with, and that makes it tremendous fun.   Speaker 1 ** 10:04 Do you think AI is going to enter into all that and maybe improve some of the   Matt Forbeck ** 10:09 old stuff? It's going to add your end to it, whether it's an ad, it's going to approve it as a large question. Yeah. So I've been ranting about AI quite a bit lately with my friends and family. But, you know, I think the problem with AI, it can be very helpful a lot of ways, but I think it's being oversold. And I think it's especially when it's being oversold for thing, for ways for people to replace writers and creative thinking, Yeah, you know, you're taking the fun out of everything. I mean, the one thing I like to say is if, if you can't be bothered to write this thing that you want to communicate to me, I'm not sure why I should be bothered to read this thing well.   Speaker 1 ** 10:48 And I think that AI will will evolve in whatever way it does. But the fact of the matter is, So do people. And I think that, in fact, people are always going to be necessary to make the process really work? AI can only do and computers can only do so much. I mean, even Ray Kurzweil talks about the singularity when people and computer brains are married, but that still means that you're going to have the human element. So it's not all going to be the computer. And I'm not ready to totally buy into to what Ray says. And I used to work for Ray, so I mean, I know Ray Well, but, but the but the bottom line is, I think that, in fact, people are always going to be able to be kind of the, the mainstay of it, as long as we allow that, if we, if we give AI too much power, then over time, it'll take more power, and that's a problem, but that's up to us to deal with?   Matt Forbeck ** 11:41 No, I totally agree with that. I just think right now, there's a very large faction of people who it's in their economic interest to oversell these things. You know, people are making chips. They're building server farms. A lot of them are being transferred from people are doing blockchain just a few years ago, and they see it as the hot new thing. The difference is that AI actually has a lot of good uses. There's some amazing things will come out of llms and such. But I again, people are over the people are selling this to us. Are often over promising things, right?   Speaker 1 ** 12:11 Yeah, well, they're not only over promising but they're they're really misdirecting people. But the other side of it is that, that, in fact, AI as a concept and as a technology is here, and we have control over how we use it. I've said a couple times on this this podcast, and I've said to others, I remember when I first started hearing about AI, I heard about the the fact that teachers were bemoaning the pack, that kids were writing their papers just using AI and turning them in, and it wasn't always easy to tell whether it was something that was written by AI or was written by the student. And I come from a little bit different view than I think a lot of people do. And my view basically is, let the kids write it if with AI, if that's what they're going to do, but then what the teacher needs to do is to take one period, for example, and give every student in that class the opportunity to come up and defend whatever paper they have. And the real question is, can they defend the paper? Which means, have they really learned the subject, or are they just relying on AI,   Matt Forbeck ** 13:18 yeah, I agree with that. I think the trouble is, a lot of people, children, you know, who are developing their abilities and their morals about this stuff, they use it as just a way to complete the assignment, right? And many of them don't even read what they turn in, right, right? Just know that they've got something here that will so again, if you can't be bothered to read the thing that you manufactured, you're not learning anything about it,   Speaker 1 ** 13:39 which is why, if you are forced to defend it, it's going to become pretty obvious pretty fast, whether you really know it or not. Now, I've used AI on a number of occasions in various ways, but I use it to maybe give me ideas or prepare something that I then modify and shape. And I may even interact with AI a couple of times, but I'm definitely involved with the process all the way down the line, because it still has to be something that I'm responsible for.   Matt Forbeck ** 14:09 I agree. I mean, the whole point of doing these things is for people to connect with each other, right? I want to learn about the ideas you have in your head. I want to see how they jive with ones in my head. But if I'm just getting something that's being spit out by a machine and not you, and not being curated by you at any point, that doesn't seem very useful, right? So if you're the more involved people are in it, the more useful it is.   Speaker 1 ** 14:31 Well, I agree, and you know, I think again, it's a tool, and we have to decide how the tool is going to be used, which is always the way it ought to be. Right?   Matt Forbeck ** 14:42 Exactly, although sometimes it's large corporations deciding,   Speaker 1 ** 14:45 yeah, well, there's that too. Well, individuals,   Matt Forbeck ** 14:49 we get to make our own choices. Though you're right,   Speaker 1 ** 14:51 yes, and should Well, so, so when did you start bringing writing into what you. Did, and make that a really significant part of what you did?   Matt Forbeck ** 15:03 Well, pretty early on, I mean, I started doing one of the first things I did was a gaming zine, which was basically just a print magazine that was like, you know, 32 pages, black and white, about the different tabletop games. So we were writing those in the days, design and writing are very closely linked when it comes to tabletop games and even in video games. The trick of course is that designing a game and writing the rules are actually two separate sets of skills. So one of the first professional gig I ever had during writing was in games was some friends of mine had designed a game for a company called Mayfair games, which went on to do sellers of contain, which is a big, uh, entry level game, and but they needed somebody to write the rules, so they called me over, showed me how to play the game. I took notes and I I wrote it down in an easy to understand, clear way that people had just picked up the box. Could then pick it up and teach themselves how to play, right? So that was early on how I did it. But the neat thing about that is it also taught me to think about game design. I'm like, when I work on games, I think about, who is this game going to be for, and how are we going to teach it to them? Because if they can't learn the game, there's no point of the game at all, right?   Speaker 1 ** 16:18 And and so I'm right? I'm a firm believer that a lot of technical writers don't do a very good job of technical writing, and they write way over people's heads. I remember the first time I had to write, well, actually, I mentioned I worked for Kurzweil. I was involved with a project where Ray Kurzweil had developed his original omniprent optical character recognition system. And I and the National Federation of the Blind created with him a project to put machines around the country so that blind people could use them and give back to Ray by the time we were all done, recommendations as to what needed to go in the final first production model of the machine. So I had to write a training manual to teach people how to use it. And I wrote this manual, and I was always of the opinion that it had to be pretty readable and usable by people who didn't have a lot of technical knowledge. So I wrote the manual, gave it to somebody to read, and said, Follow the directions and and work with the machine and all that. And they did, and I was in another room, and they were playing with it for a couple of hours, and they came in and they said, I'm having a problem. I can't figure out how to turn off the machine. And it turns out that I had forgotten to put in the instruction to turn off the machine. And it wasn't totally trivial. There were steps you had to go through. It was a Data General Nova two computer, and you had to turn it off the right way and the whole system off the appropriate way, or you could, could mess everything up. So there was a process to doing it. So I wrote it in, and it was fine. But, you know, I've always been a believer that the textbooks are way too boring. Having a master's degree in physics, I am of the opinion that physics textbook writers, who are usually pretty famous and knowledgeable scientists, ought to include with all the text and the technical stuff they want to put in, they should put in stories about what they did in you bring people in, draw them into the whole thing, rather than just spewing out a bunch of technical facts.   Matt Forbeck ** 18:23 No, I agree. My my first calculus professor was a guy who actually explained how Newton and Leipzig actually came up with calculus, and then he would, you know, draw everything on the board and turn around say, and isn't that amazing? And you were, like, just absolutely enamored with the idea of how they had done these things, right? Yeah. And what you're doing there, when you, when you, when you give the instructions to somebody and say, try this out. That's a very big part of gaming, actually, because what we do this thing called play testing, where we take something before it's ready to be shown to the public, and we give it to other people and say, try this out. See how it works. Let me know when you're starting out of your first playing you play with like your family and friends and people will be brutal with you and give you hints about how you can improve things. But then, even when you get to the rules you're you send those out cold to people, or, you know, if you're a big company, you watch them through a two way mirror or one way mirror, and say, Hey, let's see how they react to everything. And then you take notes, and you try to make it better every time you go through. And when I'm teaching people to play games at conventions, for instance, I will often say to them, please ask questions if you don't understand anything, that doesn't mean you're dumb. Means I didn't explain it well enough, right? And my job as a person writing these rules is to explain it as well as I humanly can so it can't be misconstrued or misinterpreted. Now that doesn't mean you can correct everything. Somebody's always got like, Oh, I missed that sentence, you know, whatever. But you do that over and over so you can try to make it as clear and concise as possible, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 19:52 Well, you have somewhat of a built in group of people to help if you let your kids get involved. Involved. So how old are your kids?   Matt Forbeck ** 20:03 My eldest is 26 he'll be 27 in January. Marty is a game designer, actually works with me on the marble tabletop role playing game, and we have a new book coming out, game book for Minecraft, called Minecraft role for adventure, that's coming out on July 7, I think, and the rest of the kids are 23 we have 423 year olds instead of quadruplets, one of whom is actually going into game design as well, and the other says two are still in college, and one has moved off to the work in the woods. He's a very woodsy boy. Likes to do environmental education with people.   Speaker 1 ** 20:39 Wow. Well, see, but you, but you still have a good group of potential game designers or game critics anyway.   Matt Forbeck ** 20:47 Oh, we all play games together. We have a great time. We do weekly game nights here. Sometimes they're movie nights, sometimes they're just pizza nights, but we shoot for game and pizza   Speaker 1 ** 20:56 if we get lucky and your wife goes along with all this too.   Matt Forbeck ** 21:00 She does. She doesn't go to the game conventions and stuff as much, and she's not as hardcore of a gamer, but she likes hanging out with the kids and doing everything with us. We have a great time.   Speaker 1 ** 21:10 That's that's pretty cool. Well, you, you've got, you've got to build an audience of some sorts, and that's neat that a couple of them are involved in it as well. So they really like what dad does, yeah,   Matt Forbeck ** 21:23 yeah. We, I started taking them each to conventions, which are, you know, large gatherings gamers in real life. The biggest one is Gen Con, which happens in Indianapolis in August. And last year, I think, we had 72,000 people show up. And I started taking the kids when they were 10 years old, and my wife would come up with them then. And, you know, 10 years old is a lot. 72,000 people is a lot for a 10 year old. So she can mention one day and then to a park the next day, you know, decompress a lot, and then come back on Saturday and then leave on Sunday or whatever, so that we didn't have them too over stimulated. But they really grown to love it. I mean, it's part of our annual family traditions in the summer, is to go do these conventions and play lots of games with each other and meet new people too well.   Speaker 1 ** 22:08 And I like the way you put it. The games are really puzzles, which they are, and it's and it's fun. If people would approach it that way, no matter what the game is, they're, they're aspects of puzzles involved in most everything that has to do with the game, and that's what makes it so fun.   Matt Forbeck ** 22:25 Exactly, no. The interesting thing is, when you're playing with other people, the other people are changing the puzzles from their end that you have to solve on your end. And sometimes the puzzle is, how do I beat this person, or how do I defeat their strategy, or how do I make an alliance with somebody else so we can win? And it's really always very intriguing. There's so many different types of games. There's nowadays, there's like something like 50 to 100 new board games that come out and tabletop games every month, right? It's just like a fire hose. It's almost like, when I was starting out as a novelist, I would go into Barnes and Noble or borders and go, Oh my gosh, look at all these books. And now I do the same thing about games. It's just, it's incredible. Nobody, no one person, could keep up with all of them.   Speaker 1 ** 23:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah, way too much. I would love to explore playing more video games, but I don't. I don't own a lot of the technology, although I'm sure that there are any number of them that can be played on a computer, but we'll have to really explore and see if we can find some. I know there are some that are accessible for like blind people with screen readers. I know that some people have written a few, which is kind of cool. Yeah.   Matt Forbeck ** 23:36 And Xbox has got a new controller out that's meant to be accessible to large amount of people. I'm not sure, all the different aspects of it, but that's done pretty well, too   Speaker 1 ** 23:44 well. And again, it comes down to making it a priority to put all of that stuff in. It's not like it's magic to do. It's just that people don't know how to do it. But I also think something else, which is, if you really make the products more usable, let's say by blind people with screen readers. You may be especially if it's well promoted, surprised. I'm not you necessarily, but people might well be surprised as to how many others might take advantage of it so that they don't necessarily have to look at the screen, or that you're forced to listen as well as look in order to figure out what's going on or take actions.   Matt Forbeck ** 24:29 No, definitely true. It's, you know, people audio books are a massive thing nowadays. Games tend to fall further behind that way, but it's become this incredible thing that obviously, blind people get a great use out of but my wife is addicted to audio books now. She actually does more of those than she does reading. I mean, I technically think they're both reading. It's just one's done with yours and one's done with your eyes.   Speaker 1 ** 24:51 Yeah, there's but there's some stuff, whether you're using your eyes or your fingers and reading braille, there's something about reading a book that way that's. Even so a little bit different than listening to it. Yeah, and there's you're drawn in in some ways, in terms of actually reading that you're not necessarily as drawn into when you're when you're listening to it, but still, really good audio book readers can help draw you in, which is important, too,   Matt Forbeck ** 25:19 very much. So yeah, I think the main difference for reading, whether it's, you know, again, through Braille or through traditional print, is that you can stop. You can do it at your own pace. You can go back and look at things very easily, or read or check things, read things very easily. That you know, if you're reading, if you're doing an audio book, it just goes on and it's straight on, boom, boom, boom, pace. You can say, Wait, I'm going to put this down here. What was that thing? I remember back there? It was like three pages back, but it's really important, let me go check that right.   Speaker 1 ** 25:50 There are some technologies that allow blind people and low vision people and others, like people with dyslexia to use an audio book and actually be able to navigate two different sections of it. But it's not something that is generally available to the whole world, at least to the level that it is for blind people. But I can, I can use readers that are made to be able to accept the different formats and go back and look at pages, go back and look at headings, and even create bookmarks to bookmark things like you would normally by using a pen or a pencil or something like that. So there are ways to do some of that. So again, the technology is making strides.   Matt Forbeck ** 26:37 That's fantastic. Actually, it's wonderful. Just, yeah, it's great. I actually, you know, I lost half the vision of my right eye during back through an autoimmune disease about 13 years ago, and I've always had poor vision. So I'm a big fan of any kind of way to make things easier,   Speaker 1 ** 26:54 like that. Well, there, there are things that that are available. It's pretty amazing. A guy named George curser. Curser created a lot of it years ago, and it's called the DAISY format. And the whole idea behind it is that you can actually create a book. In addition to the audio tracks, there are XML files that literally give you the ability to move and navigate around the book, depending on how it's created, as final level as you choose.   Matt Forbeck ** 27:25 Oh, that's That's amazing. That's fantastic. I'm actually really glad to hear that.   Speaker 1 ** 27:28 So, yeah, it is kind of fun. So there's a lot of technology that's that's doing a lot of different sorts of things and and it helps. But um, so for you, in terms of dealing with, with the games, you've, you've written games, but you've, you've actually written some novels as well, right?   Matt Forbeck ** 27:50 Yeah, I've got like 30, it depends on how you count a novel, right? Okay, like some of my books are to pick a path books, right? Choose Your Own Adventure type stuff. So, but I've got 35 traditional novels written or more, I guess, now, I lost track a while ago, and probably another dozen of these interactive fiction books as well. So, and I like doing those. I've also written things like Marvel encyclopedias and Avengers encyclopedias and all sorts of different pop culture books. And, you know, I like playing in different worlds. I like writing science fiction, fantasy, even modern stuff. And most of it, for me comes down to telling stories, right? If you like to tell stories, you can tell stories through a game or book or audio play or a TV show or a comic, or I've done, you know, interactive museum, games and displays, things like that. The main thing is really a story. I mean, if you're comfortable sitting down at a bar and having a drink with somebody, doesn't have to be alcohol, just sitting down and telling stories with each other for fun. That's where the core of it all is really   Speaker 1 ** 28:58 right. Tell me about interactive fiction book.   Matt Forbeck ** 29:01 Sure, a lot of these are basically just done, like flow charts, kind of like the original Zork and adventure that you were talking about where you I actually, I was just last year, I brought rose Estes, who's the inventor of the endless quest books, which were a cross between Dungeons and Dragons, and choose your own adventure books. She would write the whole thing out page by page on a typewriter, and then, in order to shuffle the pages around so that people wouldn't just read straight through them, she'd throw them all up in the air and then just put them back in whatever order they happen to be. But essentially, you read a section of a book, you get to the end, and it gives you a choice. Would you like to go this way or that way? Would you like to go beat up this goblin? Or would you like to make friends with this warrior over here? If you want to do one of these things, go do page xx, right? Got it. So then you turn to that page and you go, boom, some, actually, some of the endless quest books I know were turned into audio books, right? And I actually, I. Um, oddly, have written a couple Dungeons and Dragons, interactive books, audio books that have only been released in French, right? Because there's a company called Looney l, u n, i, i that has this little handheld device that's for children, that has an A and a B button and a volume button. And you, you know, you get to the point that says, if you want to do this, push a, if you want to do that, push B, and the kids can go through these interactive stories and and, you know, there's ones for clue and Dungeons and Dragons and all sorts of other licenses, and some original stories too. But that way there's usually, like, you know, it depends on the story, but sometimes there's, like, 10 to 20 different endings. A lot of them are like, Oh no, you've been killed. Go back to where you started, right? And if you're lucky, the longer ones are, the more fun ones. And you get to, you know, save the kingdom and rescue the people and make good friends and all that good stuff,   Michael Hingson ** 30:59 yeah, and maybe fall in love with the princess or Prince.   Matt Forbeck ** 31:02 Yeah, exactly right. It all depends on the genre and what you're working in. But the idea is to give people some some choices over how they want the story to go. You're like, Well, do you want to investigate this dark, cold closet over here, or would you rather go running outside and playing around? And some of them can seem like very innocent choices, and other ones are like, well, uh, 10 ton weight just fell on. You go back to the last thing.   Speaker 1 ** 31:23 So that dark hole closet can be a good thing or a bad thing,   Matt Forbeck ** 31:28 exactly. And the trick is to make the deaths the bad endings, actually just as entertaining as anything else, right? And then people go, Well, I got beat, and I gotta go back and try that again. So yeah, if they just get the good ending all the way through, they often won't go back and look at all the terrible ones. So it's fun to trick them sometimes and have them go into terrible spots. And I like to put this one page in books too that sometimes says, How did you get here? You've been cheating there. This book, this page, is actually not led to from any other part of the book. You're just flipping   Speaker 1 ** 31:59 through. Cheater, cheater book, do what you   Matt Forbeck ** 32:04 want, but if you want to play it the right way, go back.   Speaker 1 ** 32:07 Kid, if you want to play the game. Yeah, exactly. On the other hand, some people are nosy.   Matt Forbeck ** 32:15 You know, I was always a kid who would poke around and wanted to see how things were, so I'm sure I would have found that myself but absolutely related, you know,   Speaker 1 ** 32:23 yeah, I had a general science teacher who brought in a test one day, and he gave it to everyone. And so he came over to me because it was, it was a printed test. He said, Well, I'm not going to give you the test, because the first thing it says is, read all the instructions, read, read the test through before you pass it, before you take it. And he said, most people won't do that. And he said, I know you would. And the last question on the test is answer, only question one.   Matt Forbeck ** 32:55 That's great. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 32:57 that was cute. And he said, I know that. I that there's no way you would, would would fall for that, because you would say, Okay, let's read the instructions and then read the whole test. That's what it said. And the instruction were, just read the whole test before you start. And people won't do that.   Matt Forbeck ** 33:13 No, they'll go through, take the whole thing. They get there and go, oh, did I get there? Was a, there's a game publisher. I think it was Steve Jackson Games, when they were looking for people, write for them, or design stuff for them, or submit stuff to them, would have something toward the end of the instructions that would say, put like a the letter seven, or put seven a on page one right, and that way they would know if you had read the instructions, if you hadn't bothered to Read the instructions, they wouldn't bother reading anything else.   Speaker 1 ** 33:42 Yeah, which is fair, because the a little harsh, well, but, but, you know, we often don't learn enough to pay attention to details. I know that when I was taking physics in college, that was stressed so often it isn't enough to get the numbers right. If you don't get the units right as well. Then you're, you're not really paying attention to the details. And paying attention to the details is so important.   Matt Forbeck ** 34:07 That's how they crash from those Mars rovers, wasn't it? They somebody messed up the units, but going back and forth between metric and, yeah, and Imperial and, well, you know, it cost somebody a lot of money at one point. Yeah. Yeah. What do you   Speaker 1 ** 34:21 this is kind of the way it goes. Well, tell me, yeah. Well, they do matter, no matter what people think, sometimes they do matter. Well, tell me about the Diana Jones award. First of all, of course, the logical question for many people is, who is Diana Jones? Yeah, Diana Jones doesn't exist, right? That's There you go. She's part game somewhere? No, no, it doesn't be in a game somewhere.   Matt Forbeck ** 34:43 Then now there's actually an author named Diana Wynne Jones, who's written some amazing fantasy stories, including Howell's Moving Castle, which has turned into a wonderful anime movie, but it has nothing to do with her or any other person. Because originally, the Diana Jones award came about. Because a friend of mine, James Wallace, had somehow stumbled across a trophy that fell into his hands, and it was a pub trivia trophy that used to be used between two different gaming companies in the UK, and one of those was TSR, UK, the United Kingdom department. And at one point, the company had laid off everybody in that division just say, Okay, we're closing it all down. So the guys went and burned a lot of the stuff that they had, including a copy of the Indiana Jones role playing game, and the only part of the logo that was left said Diana Jones. And for some reason, they put this in a in a fiberglass or Plexiglas pyramid, put it on a base, a wooden base, and it said the Diana Jones award trophy, right? And this was the trophy that they used they passed back and forth as a joke for their pub trivia contest. Fell into James's hands, and he decided, You know what, we're going to give this out for the most excellent thing in gaming every year. And we've now done this. This will be 25 years this summer. We do it at the Wednesday night before Gen Con, which starts on Thursday, usually at the end of July or early August. And as part of that, actually, about five years ago, we started, one of the guys suggested we should do something called the emerging designers program. So we actually became a 501, c3, so we could take donations. And now we take four designers every year, fly them in from wherever they happen to be in the world, and put them up in a hotel, give them a badge the show, introduce them to everybody, give them an honorarium so they can afford to skip work for a week and try to help launch their careers. I mean, these are people that are in the first three years of their design careers, and we try to work mostly with marginalized or et cetera, people who need a little bit more representation in the industry too. Although we can select anybody, and it's been really well received, it's been amazing. And there's a group called the bundle of holding which sells tabletop role playing game PDFs, and they've donated 10s of 1000s of dollars every year for us to be able to do this. And it's kind of funny, because I never thought I'd be end up running a nonprofit, but here I'm just the guy who writes checks to the different to the emerging designer program. Folks are much more tied into that community that I am. But one of the real reasons I wanted to do something like that or be involved with it, because if you wander around with these conventions and you notice that it starts getting very gray after a while, right? It's you're like, oh, there's no new people coming in. It's all older people. I we didn't I didn't want us to all end up as like the Grandpa, grandpa doing the HO model railroad stuff in the basement, right? This dying hobby that only people in their 60s and 70s care about. So bringing in fresh people, fresh voices, I think, is very important, and hopefully we're doing some good with that. It's been a lot of fun either way.   Speaker 1 ** 37:59 Well, I have you had some success with it? Yeah, we've   Matt Forbeck ** 38:02 had, well, let's see. I think we've got like 14 people. We've brought in some have already gone on to do some amazing things. I mean, it's only been a few years, so it's hard to tell if they're gonna be legends in their time, but again, having them as models for other people to look at and say, Oh, maybe I could do that. That's been a great thing. The other well, coincidentally, Dungeons and Dragons is having its best 10 year streak in its history right now, and probably is the best selling it's ever been. So coinciding with that, we've seen a lot more diversity and a lot more people showing up to these wonderful conventions and playing these kinds of games. There's also been an advent of this thing called actual play, which is the biggest one, is a group called Critical Role, which is a whole bunch of voice actors who do different cartoons and video games and such, and they play D and D with each other, and then they record the games, and they produce them on YouTube and for podcasts. And these guys are amazing. There's a couple of other ones too, like dimension 20 and glass cannon, the critical role guys actually sold out a live performance at Wembley Arena last summer. Wow. And dimension. Dimension 20 sold out Madison Square Garden. I'm like, if you'd have told me 20 years ago that you know you could sell out an entire rock stadium to have people watch you play Dungeons and Dragons, I would have laughed. I mean, there's no way it would have been possible. But now, you know, people are very much interested in this. It's kind of wild, and it's, it's fun to be a part of that. At some level,   Speaker 1 ** 39:31 how does the audience get drawn in to something like that? Because they are watching it, but there must be something that draws them in.   Matt Forbeck ** 39:39 Yeah, part of it is that you have some really skilled some actors are very funny, very traumatic and very skilled at improvisation, right? So the the dungeon master or Game Master will sit there and present them with an idea or whatever. They come up each with their own characters. They put them in wonderful, strong voices. They kind of inhabit the roles in a way that an actor. A really top level actor would, as opposed to just, you know, me sitting around a table with my friends. And because of that, they become compelling, right? My Marty and my his wife and I were actually at a convention in Columbus, Ohio last weekend, and this group called the McElroy family, actually, they do my brother, my brother and me, which is a hit podcast, but they also do an actual play podcast called The Adventure zone, where they just play different games. And they are so funny. These guys are just some of the best comedians you'll ever hear. And so them playing, they actually played our Marvel game for a five game session, or a five podcast session, or whatever, and it was just stunningly fun to listen to. People are really talented mess around with something that we built right it's very edifying to see people enjoying something that you worked on.   Speaker 1 ** 40:51 Do you find that the audiences get drawn in and they're actually sort of playing the game along, or as well? And may disagree with what some of the choices are that people make?   Matt Forbeck ** 41:02 Oh, sure. But I mean, if the choices are made from a point of the character that's been expressed, that people are following along and they they already like the character, they might go, Oh, those mean, you know that guy, there are some characters they love to hate. There are some people they're they're angry at whatever, but they always really appreciate the actors. I mean, the actors have become celebrities in their own right. They've they sell millions of dollars for the comic books and animated TV shows and all these amazing things affiliated with their actual play stuff. And it's, I think it, part of it is because, it's because it makes the games more accessible. Some people are intimidated by these games. So it's not really, you know, from a from a physical disability kind of point. It's more of a it makes it more accessible for people to be nervous, to try these things on their own, or don't really quite get how they work. They can just sit down and pop up YouTube or their podcast program and listen into people doing a really good job at it. The unfortunate problem is that the converse of that is, when you're watching somebody do that good of a job at it, it's actually hard to live up to that right. Most people who play these games are just having fun with their friends around a table. They're not performing for, you know, 10s of 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of people. So there's a different level of investments, really, at that point, and some people have been known to be cowed by that, by that, or daunted by that.   Speaker 1 ** 42:28 You work on a lot of different things. I gather at the same time. What do you what do you think about that? How do you like working on a lot of different projects? Or do you, do you more focus on one thing, but you've got several things going on, so you'll work on something for one day, then you'll work on something else. Or how do you how do you do it all?   Matt Forbeck ** 42:47 That's a good question. I would love to just focus on one thing at a time. Now, you know the trouble is, I'm a freelancer, right? I don't set my I don't always get to say what I want to work on. I haven't had to look for work for over a decade, though, which has been great. People just come to me with interesting things. The trouble is that when you're a freelancer, people come in and say, Hey, let's work on this. I'm like, Yeah, tell me when you're ready to start. And you do that with like, 10 different people, and they don't always line up in sequence properly, right? Yeah? Sometimes somebody comes up and says, I need this now. And I'm like, Yeah, but I'm in the middle of this other thing right now, so I need to not sleep for another week, and I need to try to figure out how I'm going to put this in between other things I'm working on. And I have noticed that after I finish a project, it takes me about a day or three to just jump track. So if I really need to, I can do little bits here and there, but to just fully get my brain wrapped around everything I'm doing for a very complex project, takes me a day or three to say, Okay, now I'm ready to start this next thing and really devote myself to it. Otherwise, it's more juggling right now, having had all those kids, probably has prepared me to juggle. So I'm used to having short attention span theater going on in my head at all times, because I have to jump back and forth between things. But it is. It's a challenge, and it's a skill that you develop over time where you're like, Okay, I can put this one away here and work on this one here for a little while. Like today, yeah, I knew I was going to talk to you, Michael. So I actually had lined up another podcast that a friend of mine wanted to do with me. I said, Let's do them on the same day. This way I'm not interrupting my workflow so much, right? Makes sense? You know, try to gang those all together and the other little fiddly bits I need to do for administration on a day. Then I'm like, Okay, this is not a day off. It's just a day off from that kind of work. It's a day I'm focusing on this aspect of what I do.   Speaker 1 ** 44:39 But that's a actually brings up an interesting point. Do you ever take a day off or do what do you do when you're when you deciding that you don't want to do gaming for a while?   Matt Forbeck ** 44:49 Yeah, I actually kind of terrible. But you know, you know, my wife will often drag me off to places and say we're going to go do this when. Yes, we have a family cabin up north in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that we go to. Although, you know, my habit there is, I'll work. I'll start work in the morning on a laptop or iPad until my battery runs out, and then I shut it down, put on a charger, and then I go out and swim with everybody for the rest of the day. So it depends if I'm on a deadline or not, and I'm almost always on a deadline, but there are times I could take weekends off there. One of the great things of being a freelancer, though, and especially being a stay at home father, which is part of what I was doing, is that when things come up during the middle of the week, I could say, oh, sure, I can be flexible, right? The trouble is that I have to pay for that time on my weekends, a lot of the time, so I don't really get a lot of weekends off. On the other hand, I'm not I'm not committed to having to work every day of the week either, right? I need to go do doctor appointments, or we want to run off to Great America and do a theme park or whatever. I can do that anytime I want to. It's just I have to make up the time at other points during the week. Does your wife work? She does. She was a school social worker for many years, and now as a recruiter at a local technical college here called Black Hawk tech. And she's amazing, right? She's fantastic. She has always liked working. The only time she stopped working was for about a year and a half after the quads were born, I guess, two years. And that was the only time I ever took a job working with anybody else, because we needed the health insurance, so I we always got it through her. And then when she said, Well, I'm gonna stay home with the kids, which made tons of sense, I went and took a job with a video game company up in Madison, Wisconsin called Human Head Studios for about 18 months, 20 months. And then the moment she told me she was thinking about going back to work, I'm like, Oh, good, I can we can Cobra for 18 months and pay for our own health insurance, and I'm giving notice this week, and, you know, we'll work. I left on good terms that everybody. I still talk to them and whatever, but I very much like being my own boss and not worrying about what other people are going to tell me to do. I work with a lot of clients, which means I have a lot of people telling me what to do. But you know, if it turns out bad, I can walk I can walk away. If it turns out good, hopefully we get to do things together, like the the gig I've been working out with Marvel, I guess, has been going on for like, four years now, with pretty continuous work with them, and I'm enjoying every bit of it. They're great people to work with.   Speaker 1 ** 47:19 Now, you were the president of Pinnacle entertainment for a little while. Tell me about that.   Matt Forbeck ** 47:24 I was, that was a small gaming company I started up with a guy named Shane Hensley, who was another tabletop game designer. Our big game was something called Dead Lands, which was a Western zombie cowboy kind of thing. Oh gosh, Western horror. So. And it was pretty much a, you know, nobody was doing Western horror back in those days. So we thought, Oh, this is safe. And to give you an example of parallel development, we were six months into development, and another company, White Wolf, which had done a game called Vampire the Masquerade, announced that they were doing Werewolf the Wild West. And we're like, you gotta be kidding me, right? Fortunately, we still released our game three months before there, so everybody thought we were copying them, rather than the other way around. But the fact is, we were. We both just came up with the idea independently. Right? When you work in creative fields, often, if somebody wants to show you something, you say, I'd like to look at you have to sign a waiver first that says, If I do something like this, you can't sue me. And it's not because people are trying to rip you off. It's because they may actually be working on something similar, right already. Because we're all, you know, swimming in the same cultural pool. We're all, you know, eating the same cultural soup. We're watching or watching movies, playing games, doing whatever, reading books. And so it's not unusual that some of us will come up with similar ideas   Speaker 1 ** 48:45 well, and it's not surprising that from time to time, two different people are going to come up with somewhat similar concepts. So that's not a big surprise, exactly, but   Matt Forbeck ** 48:56 you don't want people getting litigious over it, like no, you don't be accused of ripping anybody off, right? You just want to be as upfront with people. With people. And I don't think I've ever actually seen somebody, at least in gaming, in tabletop games, rip somebody off like that. Just say, Oh, that's a great idea. We're stealing that it's easier to pay somebody to just say, Yes, that's a great idea. We'll buy that from you, right? As opposed to trying to do something unseemly and criminal?   Speaker 1 ** 49:24 Yeah, there's, there's something to be said for having real honor in the whole process.   Matt Forbeck ** 49:30 Yeah, I agree, and I think that especially if you're trying to have a long term career in any field that follows you, if you get a reputation for being somebody who plays dirty, nobody wants to play with you in the future, and I've always found it to be best to be as straightforward with people and honest, especially professionally, just to make sure that they trust you. Before my quadruplets were born, you could have set your clock by me as a freelancer, I never missed a deadline ever, and since then, I've probably it's a. Rare earth thing to make a deadline, because, you know, family stuff happens, and you know, there's just no controlling it. But whenever something does happen, I just call people up and say, hey, look, it's going to be another week or two. This is what's going on. And because I have a good reputation for completing the job and finishing quality work, they don't mind. They're like, Oh, okay, I know you're going to get this to me. You're not just trying to dodge me. So they're willing to wait a couple weeks if they need to, to get to get what they need. And I'm very grateful to them for that. And I'm the worst thing somebody can do is what do, what I call turtling down, which is when it's like, Oh no, I'm late. And then, you know, they cut off all communication. They don't talk to anybody. They just kind of try to disappear as much as they can. And we all, all adults, understand that things happen in your life. It's okay. We can cut you some slack every now and then, but if you just try to vanish, that's not even possible.   Speaker 1 ** 50:54 No, there's a lot to be there's a lot to be said for trust and and it's so important, I think in most anything that we do, and I have found in so many ways, that there's nothing better than really earning someone's trust, and they earning your trust. And it's something I talk about in my books, like when live with a guide dog, live like a guide dog, which is my newest book, it talks a lot about trust, because when you're working with a guide dog, you're really building a team, and each member of the team has a specific job to do, and as the leader of the team, it's my job to also learn how to communicate with the other member of the team. But the reality is, it still comes down to ultimately, trust, because I and I do believe that dogs do love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally. But the difference between dogs and people is that people that dogs are much more open to trust, for the most part, unless they've just been totally traumatized by something, but they're more open to trust. And there's a lesson to be learned there. No, I   Matt Forbeck ** 52:03 absolutely agree with that. I think, I think most people in general are trustworthy, but as you say, a lot of them have trauma in their past that makes it difficult for them to open themselves up to that. So that's actually a pretty wonderful way to think about things. I like that,   Speaker 1 ** 52:17 yeah, well, I think that trust is is so important. And I know when I worked in professional sales, it was all about trust. In fact, whenever I interviewed people for jobs, I always asked them what they were going to sell, and only one person ever answered me the way. I really hoped that everybody would answer when I said, So, tell me what you're going to be selling. He said, The only thing I have to really sell is myself and my word, and nothing else. It really matters. Everything else is stuff. What you have is stuff. It's me selling myself and my word, and you have to, and I would expect you to back me up. And my response was, as long as you're being trustworthy, then you're going to get my backing all the way. And he was my most successful salesperson for a lot of reasons, because he got it.   Matt Forbeck ** 53:08 Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, I mean, I've worked with people sourcing different things too, for sales, and if you can rely on somebody to, especially when things go wrong, to come through for you. And to be honest with you about, you know, there's really that's a hard thing to find. If you can't depend on your sources for what you're building, then you can't depend on anything. Everything else falls apart.   Speaker 1 ** 53:29 It does. You've got to start at the beginning. And if people can't earn your trust, and you earn theirs, there's a problem somewhere, and it's just not going to work.   Matt Forbeck ** 53:39 Yeah, I just generally think people are decent and want to help. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've had issues. Car breaks down the road in Wisconsin. Here, if somebody's car goes in the ditch, everybody stops and just hauls them out. It's what you do when the quads were born, my stepmother came up with a sign up sheet, a booklet that she actually had spiral bound, that people could sign up every three three hours to help come over and feed and bathe, diaper, whatever the kids and we had 30 to 35 volunteers coming in every week. Wow, to help us out with that was amazing, right? They just each pick slots, feeding slots, and come in and help us out. I had to take the 2am feeding, and my wife had to take the 5am feeding by ourselves. But the rest of the week we had lots and lots of help, and we were those kids became the surrogate grandchildren for, you know, 30 to 35 women and couples really, around the entire area, and it was fantastic. Probably couldn't have survived   Speaker 1 ** 54:38 without it. And the other part about it is that all those volunteers loved it, because you all appreciated each other, and it was always all about helping and assisting.   Matt Forbeck ** 54:48 No, we appreciate them greatly. But you know every most of them, like 99% of them, whatever were women, 95 women who are ready for grandchildren and didn't have them. Had grandchildren, and they weren't in the area, right? And they had that, that love they wanted to share, and they just loved the opportunity to do it. It was, I'm choking up here talking about such a great time for us in   Speaker 1 ** 55:11 that way. Now I'm assuming today, nobody has to do diaper duty with the quads, right?   Matt Forbeck ** 55:16 Not until they have their own kids. Just checking, just checking, thankfully, think we're that is long in our past,   Speaker 1 ** 55:23 is it? Is it coming fairly soon for anybody in the future?   Matt Forbeck ** 55:27 Oh, I don't know. That's really entirely up to them. We would love to have grandchildren, but you know, it all comes in its own time. They're not doing no well. I, one of my sons is married, so it's possible, right? And one of my other sons has a long term girlfriend, so that's possible, but, you know, who knows? Hopefully they're they have them when they're ready. I always say, if you have kids and you want them, that's great. If you have, if you don't have kids and you don't want them, that's great. It's when you cross the two things that,   Speaker 1 ** 55:57 yeah, trouble, yeah, that's that is, that is a problem. But you really like working with yourself. You love the entre

Honoring the memory of Marian McQuade, with poems and a letter by Richard Levine, Alice Duggan, and Sue Marcus. Support the show

In 1986, when Kristine S. Ervin was eight years old, her mother was abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered in Oklahoma. Decades later, Kristine tells her story in Rabbit Heart - A Mother's Murder, A Daughter's Story, a memoir weaves together her fragmented childhood memories, growing up with grief, and then as an adult, reckoning with the painful details of her mother's death. The course of the book shifts when there is a break in the cold case of her mother's murder, leading to a trial and eventual conviction of Kyle Eckhart, one of the men responsible. In this conversation Kristine reflects on what it means to grieve for her mother and for the violent way she died. She explores the power of imagination in grief, the struggle of piecing together memories shaped by others, and how writing became both an outlet and a way to preserve a connection to her mother. Together, Jana and Kristine talk about: What she remembers about her mother and which of those memories are shaped by what others remember.  How Kristine reacted to media portrayals of her mother's life and death.  What she remembers about learning her mother was abducted and then the day she found out she was murdered.   What it was like to grow up not knowing who killed her mother. The story behind the title of her memoir, Rabbit Heart. The role of imagination and fantasy in both childhood and adult grief. The emotional impact of learning new, violent details about her mother's death, and how this knowledge changed Kristine's relationship with her grief over time. How the publication of Rabbit Heart allowed her to connect with her mother's memory in a new way.  Content note: this episode includes details of violence, sexual assault, and murder, along with some adult language. Please listen with care. Kristine Ervin grew up in a small suburb of Oklahoma City and is now an associate professor at West Chester University, outside Philadelphia. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature, with a focus in nonfiction, from the University of Houston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fourth Genre, Crimereads, Crab Orchard Review, Brevity, Passages North, and Silk Road. Her essay "Cleaving To," was named a notable essay in the Best American Essays 2013. Kristine's debut memoir Rabbit Heart is currently available from Counterpoint Press.

When medicine gets tough, some turn to running, others to painting… but for Paulette Osamer, MD, and Arati Kamat, MD, the answer was writing. In this week's Ripples: Physician Well-Being podcast, they open up about how creative writing helped them navigate emotional challenges, build resilience, and reconnect with the joy that first brought them to medicine. Their conversation might change the way you see self-care.

This week we're throwing it back to season 2. Valerie is studying The Hero's Gift Expressed and Melanie is studying Forces of Antagonism. Legally Blonde is a beautiful example of both! Get The Fundamentals of Storytelling today! Go to storynerd.ca/courses and use coupon code CANADA50, now through July 7, for 50% off. For access to writing templates and worksheets, and more than 70 hours of training (all for free), subscribe to Valerie's Inner Circle.To learn to read like a writer, visit Melanie's website.

This episode takes Jack Aldane to Manchester, where he meets two men who knew Martin Amis in a rather unique setting. Ian McGuire and John McAuliffe, both esteemed authors, are the co-founders of The Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester.Not long after establishing this bastion of new literary talent in 2007, the pair began the search for ambassadors to endorse its mission and teach new entrants. In 2006-2007, Martin Amis joined as Iconic Professor of Creative Writing. He was followed in 2011-2012 by Colm Tóibín, who in turn was followed by Jeanette Winterson, who has filled the role since 2013. More recently, the centre has enjoyed the employment of Emma Clarke and Tim Price on its new screenwriting modules. As its website explains, the centre teaches people "how to write novels, short stories, poems, plays and screenplays", helping students "to read as a writer reads, offer seminars on form and theory, and on contemporary publishing".Ian and John recount their fondest, funniest memories of working alongside Amis, as well as the political climate after 9/11 that made him more of a political figure than he'd ever been before.This conversation captures an altogether different look at who Amis was. This is Martin Amis not so much performing for an audience as seeking to impart the best of what he knew to a new generation of writers. This was, as John describes, an "avuncular" Amis, then in his 50s and early 60s, still game for a pint down the local with his students, and with arguably some of his best work still ahead.And then there was Amis's surprising grasp of the 5 principles of Pilates. If you want understand what that's about, you know what to do.FOLLOW US ON TWITTER/ X: @mymartinamisFIND US ON YOUTUBE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wellness Rising welcomes Natalie Canavor & Jan Booth… both teachers, authors, writers and volunteer Poetry Workshop Facilitators at the Wellness House of Annapolis…tell us that creating poetry and reading it aloud has wide-ranging, positive effects for cancer patients and their loved ones.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Jena Brown, Kevin Tumlinson, and JP Rindfleisch as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including stories about Anthropic, Grok chats, and C-SPAN. Then, stick around for a chat with Brian McAuley!Brian McAuley grew up in Weird NJ on a steady diet of Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark? episodes. He received his BA in Creative Writing and Horror Theory from NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study before getting his MFA in Film from Columbia University.As a WGA screenwriter, Brian has written five films for the Lifetime Network in addition to writing and producing the award-winning thriller Dismissed for BoulderLight Pictures. He sold his TV series pitch Affliction to Syfy Network in a pilot development deal and penned an episode of Fuller House for Netflix.Brian's debut novel Curse of the Reaper was named one of the Best Horror Books of 2022 by Esquire. His 2023 Christmas horror novella Candy Cain Kills received praise from Booklist, Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews, leading to the 2024 sequel Candy Cain Kills Again: The Second Slaying.His new novel Breathe In, Bleed Out will publish on September 2nd, 2025 from Poisoned Pen Press. His short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in various magazines and anthologies.Brian teaches as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Screenwriting at the Sidney Poitier New American Film School of Arizona State University.

We've got a special guest episode this week! Alex Temblador joins us to discuss writing characters who have a marginalized identity, her new book Writing an Identity Not Your Own, why it's important for writers to be aware of their biases, and more. Alex Temblador is the Mixed Latine award-winning author of Secrets of the Casa Rosada and Half Outlaw. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Oklahoma and is a contributor to Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America and Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology. Alex has taught creative writing seminars, workshops, and classes with the Women's Fiction Writers Association, WritingWorkshops.com, the Writer's League of Texas, and more, as well as spoken about diversity in the literary world with the Texas Library Association, Abydos Learning Conference, and at many other festivals, conferences, and universities. She is an award-winning travel, arts, and culture journalist who specializes in diversity, equity, and inclusion, publishing in the likes of Conde Nast Traveler, Outside, and Travel + Leisure, and speaking about such topics at SXSW, the Society of American Travel Writers, and the World Travel Market. Alex lives in Dallas, Texas, where she runs a literary panel series called LitTalk. Buy Alex's book Writing an Identity Not Your Own: A Guide for Creative Writers Check out her course on Writing An Identity Not Your Own: For Speculative Fiction Writers and get $40 off with code WRITINGPODCAST40 Follow her on IG @alex_temblador ----- - Click here for ways to work with me + a free character profile template: www.thekatiewolf.com/info   - The last Tuesday of the month is a Q&A episode! Submit your questions for me HERE and I'll answer them on the podcast.  - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@katiewolfwrites - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiewolfwrites

Send us a textIn this episode of Quilting on the Side, Andi and Tori discuss the journey of self-publishing, particularly in the quilting community. They share their personal experiences, reflection questions for aspiring authors, and the realities of the publishing process, including financial aspects and marketing strategies. Tori introduces the Self-Publishing Incubator, a program designed to support individuals in their publishing journey with a team of experts.Want to join the Self-Publishing Incubator? CLICK HERE!Key Takeaways:Self-publishing can be a fulfilling dream for many.Reflection questions can help determine if writing a book is right for you.Identifying your expertise is crucial for writing a book.Passion and curiosity can drive your writing topics.People often seek advice from you based on your skills.Self-publishing allows for creative control over your content.Financial realities of publishing can be challenging but manageable.The publishing process requires careful planning and documentation.Low-content books can be a viable publishing option.Support systems like the Self-Publishing Incubator can facilitate the publishing journey.Chapters00:00 The Journey of Self-Publishing14:28 Deciding Between Fiction and Non-Fiction25:00 The Self-Publishing Experience28:42 The Journey of Self-Publishing33:01 Understanding Book Pricing and Profitability35:35 The Importance of Quality in Publishing40:02 The Role of Editors in the Publishing Process44:06 Exploring Low Content Publishing48:56 Launching the Self-Publishing IncubatorWant to Support the Podcast and Unlock Exclusive Perks and Content?Join our Quilting on the Side Patreon community! By becoming a patron, you'll gain access to behind-the-scenes content, bonus episodes, and exclusive resources to help you grow your quilting journey. Plus, your support helps keep the podcast thriving! Click here to join.Want More Quilting Content?

In this engaging conversation, David Bryan and Tom Lutz explore the significance of the year 1925 in American literature, discussing its remarkable contributions and the evolution of literary publishing. Lutz shares insights into the founding of the Los Angeles Review of Books, reflecting on the cultural perceptions of literature and the ongoing presence of extraordinary talent in the arts. In their conversation, Tom Lutz and David Bryan explore various themes related to entrepreneurship, cultural perspectives on publishing, the role of nonprofits in literature, and the surprises of the 1920s. They discuss the evolution of gardening and sustainability, the creative process of writing, and the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in literature. The conversation culminates in reflections on the lessons from the 1920s that can inform contemporary society, particularly in the context of rising nationalism and the need for resistance against regressive movements.Tom Lutz (born March 21, 1953) is an American writer, literary critic, and academic, renowned for his contributions to literature and publishing. He is the founding editor-in-chief and publisher of the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), which he launched in 2011 to provide a platform for literary criticism and cultural commentary.     After working in various trades, Lutz pursued higher education, earning a B.A. in English and Journalism from the University of Massachusetts. He then obtained a master's degree and a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University.        Lutz served as a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside). He retired in 2024 and now holds the title of Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Throughout his academic tenure, he taught at various institutions, including Stanford University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Copenhagen.     Lutz is the author of numerous books spanning cultural history, travel writing, and fiction. His notable works include:• American Nervousness, 1903: An Anecdotal History (1991)• Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears (1999)• Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America (2007), which received the American Book Award in 2008• Born Slippy: A Novel (2020)• Aimlessness (2021)• The Kindness of Strangers (2021)• Portraits: Moments of Intimacy on the Road (2022)His forthcoming works include Still Slippy: A Novel and 1925: A Literary Encyclopedia, both slated for release in 2025

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Sean Enfield, an essayist, poet, bassist, and educator from Dallas, TX. Currently, he resides in Milwaukee, WI where he is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of Permafrost Magazine. Now, he serves as an Assistant Nonfiction Editor at Terrain.org. His essays have been nominated for three Pushcarts and he was featured on NPR's All Things Considered as a finalist for their Three Minute Fiction contest. His debut essay collection, Holy American Burnout!, — the focus of this episode — was the runner-up for the Ann Petry Award, a finalist for The Megaphone Prize, a finalist for River Teeth's Literary Nonfiction Book Prize, and is available now. Threading his experiences both as a Texan student and later as a first-year teacher of predominantly Muslim students at a Texas middle school, Holy American Burnout! weaves personal essay and cultural critique into the historic fabric of Black and biracial identity. In it, Enfield intersects examinations of which voices are granted legitimacy by virtue of school curriculum, the complex relationship between basketball and education for Black and brown students, his students' burgeoning political consciousness during the 2016 presidential campaign, and cultural figures ranging from Kendrick Lamar to Hamlet. These classroom narratives abounding in Holy American Burnout! weave around Enfield's own formative experiences contending with a conflicted biracial family lineage, reenacting the Middle Passage as the only Black student in his 7th grade history class, and moshing in both Christian and secular hardcore pits. As Enfield wrestles with the physical, mental, and emotional burdens that American society places on educators, students, and all relatively conscious minorities in this country, he reaches for an education that better navigates our burnt-out empire. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When life feels overwhelming, we often reach for stories that make the world feel lighter, warmer, and a little more magical. That's exactly what bestselling author Ciara Blume offers her readers and why she's become one of the most talked-about voices in cozy fantasy today.Her Natural Magic Series didn't just land well with readers, it exploded. In less than six months, her debut racked up over 2 million page reads and more than 1,000 glowing reviews, quickly climbing Amazon bestseller charts in multiple categories. That's the kind of success many authors dream of… but Ciara did it while starting her author career at midlife.And that's what makes her story so powerful.Midlife Magic: Reinvention & Creativity.While many people see midlife as a point of slowing down, Ciara saw it as the perfect moment to dive in. As her son left for college, she set out to build the author career she'd long imagined. With her background as a copywriter and a Creative Writing degree from Johns Hopkins, she brought a rare mix of storytelling skill and business savvy.But she also brought perspective. Instead of rushing to secure a traditional publishing deal, Ciara chose indie publishing as her first choice, a decision that gave her creative control, flexibility, and the ability to build her author business on her own terms.Why Cozy Fantasy Matters Right Now.Ciara's books are uplifting, humorous, and occasionally magical — the very definition of cozy fantasy. But this isn't just escapism. History shows that whimsical, enchanting fiction often thrives during times of division and stress. Alice in Wonderland and The Narnia Chronicles appeared during turbulent eras, offering readers something restorative.Ciara's stories pick up that mantle. They feature themes of found family, second chances, and women reclaiming their inherent magic at any age. In a world where many of us feel disconnected, her novels remind us of the healing power of wonder.Watch Our Interview with Ciara Blume.This Friday on The Writing Community Chat Show, we'll sit down with Ciara to talk about:* Why cozy fantasy is more radical than it looks.* How fiction can serve as self-care and reduce stress.* The challenges and triumphs of building a book business at midlife.* Why natural magic resonates so deeply with modern readers.Whether you're an aspiring writer, a lover of fantasy, or someone who just needs a little spark of enchantment, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.

Ever wondered what professional copy feedback actually looks like? I'm taking you inside a real copy coaching session to show you the detailed feedback process, collaborative revision sessions, and co-writing moments that transform rough drafts into compelling copy. See exactly how the collaboration works in this episode of Talk Copy to Me.__________________________________________EPISODE 159.Read the show notes and view the full transcript here: https://erinollila.com/what-is-copy-coaching-really-like______________________________________________Here's info on your host, Erin OllilaErin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform – and even transform – its intended audience. She graduated from Fairfield University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and went on to co-found Spry, an award-winning online literary journal.When Erin's not helping her clients understand their website data or improve their website copy, you can catch her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast and guesting on shows such as Profit is a Choice, Mindful Marketing, The Power in Purpose, and Business-First Creatives.Stay in touch with Erin Ollila, SEO website copywriter:• Learn more about my VIP intensive options or just book a strategy session to get started right away• Visit Erin's website to learn more about her business, services, and productsWant to keep talking copy? Send me a text message!

In this week's episode, Melanie introduces the concept of conflict triangles and honestly, if you use them in your work, your story will improve immediately. In terms of cast design, while usually the plot supports the development of the characters in this case, the characters support the development of the plot. If you don't know which option best serves your story, you'd better tune in. Get The Fundamentals of Storytelling today! Go to storynerd.ca/courses and use coupon code CANADA50, now through July 7, for 50% off. For access to writing templates and worksheets, and more than 70 hours of training (all for free), subscribe to Valerie's Inner Circle.To learn to read like a writer, visit Melanie's website.

Latest up from Spoken Label (Spoken Word / Author Podcast) features Linda Quinn.Linda Quinn did most of her growing up in a caravan in West Country fields and byways, and later as a child of the state. She was inspired by the written word when she received her first postcard at the age of three, and set out to rescue as many printed words as she could from the local recycling dump, a collection that continues to grow.After working in the Music Industry she trained as an actress at East 15 Drama School, and was the founder of Freefall Theatre Company, performing one woman shows and ensemble pieces, and contributing to and learning from additional projects with The Magdalena Project in Cardiff, Virginia McKenna, Cristina Castrillo in Switzerland and Linda Marlowe. She also worked as an actress in a variety of small television and film roles, including the most magical time with Glenda Jackson, Joan Hickson, Anthony Quayle and Richard Harris.She created and directed performances as diverse as local community theatre and Manumission Club spectaculars for audiences of 10,000 in Ibiza, and was the co-founder of Pikes Ibiza Literary festival. Throughout this time she was scripting and editing from improvisations and developing skills that led to writing scripts, and an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck in London. Her work continues to attract noteworthy attention in the film industry, but has yet to reach the screen. Short stories have been published in various anthologies, including the online ‘Citizens Story' at The Word Factory writing community in London. After decades of living in London and teaching Creative Writing at City Lit, she now lives in France. Her debut novel ‘The Toffee Man & The Kingdom of Ends' was published earlier this year (2025), after winning the Pen to Print Book Challenge – and has been well received. It is adapted from her script ‘The Toffee Man.' It is currently receiving many five star reviews, and sitting at the top of the booklife critics list for Fiction.You can read more about the details, awards, reflections and ongoing projects in the blog via her website, coming very soon.

In this episode, I'm joined by Tim Cummings—award-winning author, actor, and creative powerhouse—whose work bridges storytelling, performance, and imagination in extraordinary ways. Tim is the author of the newly released young adult novel The Lightning People Play (Black Rose Writing), as well as Alice the Cat (Fitzroy Books), which was named an American Book Awards Finalist and received multiple national literary honors. With an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and a BFA from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, Tim brings decades of experience across theater, film, television, voice-over, and writing. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, and his award-winning essay, You Have Changed Me Forever, highlights his gift for weaving vulnerability with creativity. Beyond the page and stage, Tim is a self-proclaimed octopus and spider enthusiast, a collector of rare treasures like first-edition novels and vintage vinyl, and a master in the kitchen known for his unforgettable chili and lasagna. He also teaches writing at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, where he inspires the next generation of storytellers. Join us as Tim shares his journey as a writer, his love for storytelling, and the passions that fuel his creative life. Episode Highlights Tim Cummings author interview The Lightning People Play book Alice the Cat novel awards Young adult fiction 2025 American Book Awards finalist authors Feathered Quill Book Awards winners National Indie Excellence Awards YA fiction Independent Author Network Book of the Year finalist Creative writing tips for young adults YA fiction podcast interviews NYU Tisch alumni authors UCLA Extension Writers' Program teachers Octopus and spider enthusiasts in literature Best YA books 2025 Storytelling and creativity in writing The Rise of Young Adult Fantasy & Speculative Fiction Multi-Hyphenate Creatives Award-Winning Indie Authors The Role of MFA Programs in Shaping Writers Literature and Mental Health Author Lifestyle Content Young Adult Books in 2025 Teaching Writing in the Digital Age Creativity Beyond Boundaries Celebrating Quirky Passions in Art   Know Tim Cummings Website https://www.timcummings.ink/copy-of-the-lightning-people-play   Did you enjoy today's episode?   Please subscribe and leave a review. If you have questions, comments, or possible show topics, email  susan@tendrilsofgrief.com   Don't forget to visit Tendrils Of Grief  website and join for upcoming Webinars, Podcasts Updates and Group Coaching.   Get involve and share your thoughts and experiences in our online community   Tendrils of Grief-Survivor of Loss   To subscribe and review use one links of the links below  Amazon Apple Spotify Audacy Deezer Podcast Addict Pandora Rephonic Tune In  Connect with me Instagram: @Sue_ways Facebook:@ susan.ways Email @susan@tendrilsofgrief.com  Let me hear your thoughts!

Fluent Fiction - French: Finding Inspiration: A Montmartre Café Reunion Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/fr/episode/2025-08-25-22-34-02-fr Story Transcript:Fr: Les rayons du soleil illuminaient le petit café à Montmartre.En: The sun's rays illuminated the little café in Montmartre.Fr: Ce matin-là, Élodie, une écrivaine à la recherche d'inspiration, s'assit à une table près de la fenêtre.En: That morning, Élodie, a writer in search of inspiration, sat at a table near the window.Fr: Elle observait les passants, espérant que quelque chose éveillerait sa créativité.En: She watched the passersby, hoping that something would awaken her creativity.Fr: Le café embaumait le croissant chaud et le café fraîchement moulu.En: The café smelled of warm croissants and freshly ground coffee.Fr: Les rires et bavardages des clients créaient une ambiance chaleureuse.En: The laughter and chatter of the customers created a warm atmosphere.Fr: Élodie se sentait perdue.En: Élodie felt lost.Fr: Elle avait l'impression d'être coincée, incapable de trouver une idée pour son prochain texte.En: She had the impression of being stuck, unable to find an idea for her next piece.Fr: Perdue dans ses pensées, elle ne remarqua pas immédiatement l'arrivée de Mathieu.En: Lost in her thoughts, she didn't immediately notice the arrival of Mathieu.Fr: Celui-ci, un musicien tout juste rentré de voyage, à travers le monde, eut un sourire nostalgique en voyant Élodie.En: He, a musician just returned from traveling around the world, had a nostalgic smile upon seeing Élodie.Fr: « Élodie !En: "Élodie!"Fr: » appela-t-il, avec enthousiasme.En: he called enthusiastically.Fr: Étonnée, elle leva les yeux.En: Surprised, she looked up.Fr: « Mathieu ?En: "Mathieu?"Fr: » répondit-elle, surprise mais contente de voir un visage familier.En: she replied, surprised but glad to see a familiar face.Fr: Ils s'embrassèrent chaleureusement.En: They embraced warmly.Fr: Très vite, leurs échanges furent interrompus par l'entrée de Julien, un élève des Beaux-Arts passionné par les projets spontanés.En: Very quickly, their exchanges were interrupted by the entrance of Julien, a student from the Beaux-Arts passionate about spontaneous projects.Fr: Avec son éternelle bonne humeur, il s'installa à leur table.En: With his eternal good humor, he settled at their table.Fr: « Quelle bonne surprise !En: "What a nice surprise!"Fr: » dit Julien.En: said Julien.Fr: « Qu'est-ce qui vous amène ici ?En: "What brings you here?"Fr: » « Je cherche l'inspiration, » avoua Élodie, un peu gênée.En: "I'm looking for inspiration," admitted Élodie, a bit embarrassed.Fr: « Mais rien ne vient.En: "But nothing comes."Fr: » Mathieu, voyant l'agitation d'Élodie, proposa : « Et si on parlait de nos aventures ?En: Noticing Élodie's agitation, Mathieu suggested, "What if we talked about our adventures?Fr: Cela pourrait t'aider peut-être.En: That might help you."Fr: » Ils partagèrent alors leurs histoires.En: They then shared their stories.Fr: Mathieu raconta ses voyages en Asie, les musiques qu'il avait découvertes.En: Mathieu recounted his travels in Asia, the music he had discovered.Fr: Julien expliqua ses derniers projets artistiques, tous spontanés et remplis de couleurs.En: Julien explained his latest artistic projects, all spontaneous and full of colors.Fr: Les yeux d'Élodie s'illuminèrent peu à peu, capturant des fragments d'idées à chaque récit.En: The eyes of Élodie gradually lit up, capturing fragments of ideas with each story.Fr: La conversation devint passionnante.En: The conversation became exciting.Fr: Élodie, d'abord silencieuse, commença à poser des questions, à rire, à rêver.En: Élodie, initially silent, began to ask questions, to laugh, to dream.Fr: Un torrent d'idées l'assaillit soudain.En: A torrent of ideas suddenly assailed her.Fr: Elle vit une nouvelle direction pour son travail.En: She saw a new direction for her work.Fr: L'aventure, la musique et l'art, tout se mélangeait en elle pour créer un feu d'artifice d'inspiration.En: Adventure, music, and art, all mixed within her to create a firework of inspiration.Fr: « J'ai trouvé !En: "I found it!"Fr: » s'exclama-t-elle tout à coup, interrompant Mathieu en plein récit.En: she suddenly exclaimed, interrupting Mathieu mid-story.Fr: « Je sais ce que je vais écrire maintenant.En: "I know what I'm going to write now.Fr: Merci à vous deux !En: Thank you both!"Fr: » Mathieu et Julien échangèrent un regard complice, satisfaits de voir leur amie sourire avec espoir.En: Mathieu and Julien exchanged a knowing look, pleased to see their friend smiling with hope.Fr: Élodie quitta le café ce jour-là, le cœur léger, le carnet plein de notes et l'esprit en ébullition.En: Élodie left the café that day, her heart light, her notebook full of notes, and her mind buzzing.Fr: Elle avait retrouvé sa confiance en elle et son désir de réaliser son rêve d'écriture.En: She had regained her confidence and her desire to pursue her writing dream.Fr: La rencontre fortuite avec Mathieu et Julien lui avait offert plus qu'un simple après-midi de discussions ; elle leur était reconnaissante d'avoir ravivé en elle la flamme de la créativité.En: The chance encounter with Mathieu and Julien had offered her more than just an afternoon of discussions; she was grateful to them for reigniting the flame of creativity within her.Fr: Elle était prête à s'ouvrir au monde et à y puiser des histoires nouvelles.En: She was ready to open up to the world and draw new stories from it.Fr: Sous le ciel bleu de Montmartre, Élodie marchait, convaincue qu'elle n'oublierait jamais ce jour d'été où tout avait changé.En: Under the blue Montmartre sky, Élodie walked, convinced that she would never forget that summer day when everything changed. Vocabulary Words:the ray: le rayonthe writer: l'écrivainethe passerby: le passantto awaken: éveillerthe croissant: le croissantthe chatter: le bavardagewarm: chaudthe atmosphere: l'ambianceto be stuck: être coincéthe piece: le textelost: perduthe musician: le musiciennostalgic: nostalgiqueto embrace: s'embrasserthe student: l'élèvespontaneous: spontanégood humor: la bonne humeurto settle: s'installerto admit: avoueragitation: l'agitationto propose: proposerto recount: raconterto capture: capturerfragment: le fragmentto assail: assaillirdirection: la directionfirework: le feu d'artificeto exclaim: s'exclamerto exchange: échangerthe look: le regard

Sarah Green is the author of a previous collection, Earth Science (421 Atlanta), and the editor of Welcome to the Neighborhood: An Anthology of American Coexistence (Ohio University Press.) She has received a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. She is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at St. Cloud State University.

Send us a textThis Week on the show author David Boop stops by the show to discuss, writing, editing, Star Wars & Star Trek and much more. *******David Boop is a Denver-based speculative fiction author & editor. He's also an award-winning essayist, and screenwriter. Before turning to fiction, David worked as a DJ, film critic, journalist, and actor. David's novels run the gamut, such as the sci-fi/noir She Murdered Me with Science and the Weird Western, The Drowned Horse Chronicle. David edited the bestselling and award-nominated Weird Western anthology series beginning with Straight Outta Tombstone, followed by a trio of Space Western anthologies starting with Gunfight on Europa Station. He's edited several pulp anthologies, including Gentlemen Prefer Domino Lady, Domino Patrick: Daughter of the Domino Lady, and Green Hornet & Kato: Detroit Noir. Most recently, he edited the Jack L. Chalker's Well World tribute mosaic novel, Permutations. David is prolific in short fiction, writing across many genres including sci-fi, fantasy, horror, weird western, and superhero. Some of his shorts include media tie-ins for Predator (nominated for the 2018 Scribe Award), Kolchak the Night Stalker, The Green Hornet, and Veronica Mars. He's a Summa Cum Laude Graduate from UC-Denver in the Creative Writing program. He tutors and teaches Creative Writing, collects Funko Pops, and is a believer. You can find out more at Longshot-Productions.net.********If you would like to contact the show about being a guest, please email us at Dauna@bettertopodcast.comUpcoming guests can be found: https://dmneedom.com/upcoming-guest Follow us on Social MediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/author_d.m.needom/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bettertopodcastwithdmneedomIntro and Outro music compliments of Fast Suzi©2025 Better To...Podcast with D. M. NeedomSupport the show

This week we're flashing back to June 25, 2020, when Del Roehling and I revisited one of the greatest sequels of all time — Aliens (1986). Back then, I had just wrapped up a tough semester in my master's program for Creative Writing, and like so many of us, I was stuck at home during lockdown. Del and I took the opportunity to dive into James Cameron's explosive follow-up to Ridley Scott's Alien, and we had a blast breaking it all down. We cover:

In this episode of the Breakfast Show, Deacon Thady chats to Caroline Busher, author, and leader of a creative writing pilgrimage to Medjugorje in October. L'articolo RM Breakfast Show – Deacon Thady – Caroline Busher – Creative Writing and Spirituality proviene da Radio Maria.

In this episode, Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood explore the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence, particularly focusing on the recent advancements in AI models and their implications for creative writing and podcasting. They discuss the introduction of open-source AI models, the nuances of AI-generated content, and share their personal experiences with […]

We are a storied species: Everything we do arises from the stories we tell ourselves and each other about ourselves and each other and our relationship with the web of life.  Our current polycrisis: the accelerating annihilation of our cultures and our biosphere arises out of a particular set of stories that tell us we're isolated individuals caught in a system of separation, scarcity and powerlessness; that we can't trust anyone else and we have to do whatever it takes to get to the top of a steep-sided pyramid - that anyone who falls or fails is not worth our empathy or compassion; that the living web is a 'resource' to be exploited; that the ends of madmen always justify the means by which they steal control. This is how we end up with narratives of the 'humane genocide of non-productives' being peddled in the backwaters of the alt-right, and a world of increasing violence.So how do we change this? How do we create visions of a world that functions differently, one where every single human thrives as an integral part of a flourishing ecosphere?  One obvious route is to begin to seed stories in the various screen-based media where people engage with empathy and compassion, where our goals and values have a compassionate base, where people respond with genuine emotional literacy, as adults, instead of endlessly as adolescents. Our guest this week is Romain Vakilitabar, founder of Pathos Labs, a non-profit laboratory focused on exploring ways in which entertainment and media can rewrite harmful narratives, and change culture. One such project is PopShift, an initiative which convenes Hollywood's leading TV writers with the country's leading experts to determine how television can help catalyze new prosocial behaviors and attitudes.Romain was awarded the "Erase the Hate" fellowship from NBCUniversal in 2018 for his efforts to eradicate hatred in America. He spoke at one of the world's biggest TEDx events, has been featured in the books "2 Billion Under 20" and "Compassionate Careers", and in journals such as UC Berkeley's "Othering and Belonging".  Whether traveling between Palestine and Israel to better understand emotional relationships to the long-lasting conflict, spending weeks voluntarily homeless to empathize with the idea of "absolute need", hitchhiking thousands of miles to test the generosity of strangers, or living with conservative rural farmers in Oklahoma to better understand cultural conservatism, Romain has found that people, no matter the differences, are more alike than they imagine. Pathos Labs was born to prove it, by using the arts to dismantle systemic "othering".Romain on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/romainvak/Pathos Labs https://pathoslabs.org/Pop Shift https://popshift.org/Video from Futures Basecamp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnxKP4wecis/The Day After Movie on IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/reviews/What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Death Awake' (you don't have to be a member) it's on 2nd November - details are here.If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

In this episode, Melanie is studying female characters and how women are presented in modern stories (her work in this episode is reeeeally interesting!), and I investigate something I learned from Steven Pressfield, which is that we shouldn't introduce anything new after Act 2. Get The Fundamentals of Storytelling today! Go to storynerd.ca/courses and use coupon code CANADA50, now through July 7, for 50% off. For access to writing templates and worksheets, and more than 70 hours of training (all for free), subscribe to Valerie's Inner Circle.To learn to read like a writer, visit Melanie's website.

David Wroblewski is the author, most recently, of the novel Familiaris, his follow up to the internationally bestselling The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, an Oprah Book Club pick, Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, winner of the Colorado Book Award, Indie Choice Best Author Discovery award, and Midwest Bookseller Association's Choice award, in addition to being selected as one of the best books of the year by numerous magazines and newspapers. David received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers, and a Bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin. He lives in Colorado with the writer Kimberly McClintock and their dogs, Pie and Luci. Learn more at davidwroblewski.com Special thanks to Net Galley for advance copies. Intro reel, Writing Table Podcast 2024 Outro RecordingFollow the Writing Table:On Twitter/X: @writingtablepcEverywhere else: @writingtablepodcastEmail questions or tell us who you'd like us to invite to the Writing Table: writingtablepodcast@gmail.com.

Author Paul Coccia joins the podcast to chat about Recommended Reading, his YA book developed in partnership with Bittersweet Books! Learn his tricks for character development and interiority, why you should try throwing out your first draft, and how he pulls inspiration from lit theory. We also cover plans for the zombie apocalypse, how true crime is the antithesis to rom-coms, and why that had to happen in Bridge to Terabithia. Plus, Paul discusses the importance of representing LGBTQ+ characters and experiences by creating stories with universal appeal that are meaningful for queer readers.Paul CocciaWebsite: https://www.paulcoccia.com/Social: @pauljcocciaGood Story Company: If you have a story in your head, we're here to help you get it out into the world. We help writers of all skill sets, all genres, and all categories, at all stages of the writing process. Need a hand with brainstorming? Want to find a critique partner? Looking for an editor to help polish up your pitch, your idea, or your entire manuscript? We have all of it and more in our community. If you're ready to take the next step (or the first step) on your writing journey, we're here to help you.Website: https://www.goodstorycompany.comMembership: https://www.goodstorycompany.com/membershipWriting Workshop: https://www.storymastermind.comMary Kole: Former literary agent Mary Kole founded Good Story Company as an educational, editorial, and community resource for writers. She provides consulting and developmental editing services to writers of all categories and genres, working on children's book projects from picture book to young adult, and all kinds of trade market literature, including fantasy, sci-fi, romance, and memoir. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and has worked at Chronicle Books, the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, and Movable Type Management. She has been blogging at Kidlit.com since 2009. Her book, Writing Irresistible Kidlit, a writing reference guide for middle grade and young adult writers, is available from Writer's Digest Books.Manuscript Submission Blueprint: https://bit.ly/kolesubWriting Irresistible Kidlit: http://bit.ly/kolekidlitIrresistible Query Letters: https://amzn.to/3yg511KWriting Irresistible Picture Books: https://amzn.to/3SrApRUHow to Write a Book Now: https://BookHip.com/ZHXAAKQWriting Interiority: Crafting Irresistible Characters: https://amzn.to/4evsX0BWriting Irresistible First Pages: https://amzn.to/4gxgslqNEW! Show and Tell: https://amzn.to/4kCc4noFollow us on social:YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/goodstoryBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodstory.bsky.socialInstagram: https://instagram.com/goodstorycompanyTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@goodstorycoFacebook: https://facebook.com/goodstorycoSubstack: https://goodstoryco.substack.com/

What if you could get professional copywriting help without completely handing over control of your message? Copy coaching offers a collaborative middle ground that combines your unique voice with professional strategy and support.In this episode, I'm breaking down exactly what the done-with-you approach to copywriting looks like, who it serves best, and how the process works whether you're starting from scratch or already have copy that needs improvement. You'll learn why some business owners can't (and shouldn't) delegate copywriting completely, and how collaboration can actually produce better results than going it alone.__________________________________________EPISODE 158.Read the show notes and view the full transcript here: https://erinollila.com/the-done-with-you-approach-to-copywriting/______________________________________________Here's info on your host, Erin OllilaErin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform – and even transform – its intended audience. She graduated from Fairfield University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and went on to co-found Spry, an award-winning online literary journal.When Erin's not helping her clients understand their website data or improve their website copy, you can catch her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast and guesting on shows such as Profit is a Choice, Mindful Marketing, The Power in Purpose, and Business-First Creatives.Stay in touch with Erin Ollila, SEO website copywriter:• Learn more about my VIP intensive options or just book a strategy session to get started right away• Visit Erin's website to learn more about her business, services, and productsWant to keep talking copy? Send me a text message!

Crissy Van Meter's novel, Creatures (Algonquin Books, 2020), was a Belletrist Book pick, an NPR Book of the Year, a finalist for the WILLA Literary Award, and longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her writing appears in Vice, Guernica, Buzzfeed, and Catapult. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School and teaches creative writing at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the founder of the literary project Five Quarterly and the contributing editor for Nouvella Books. She served on the board of directors for the youth-focused literary nonprofit Novelly. She lives in Los Angeles where she is the Head of Books forTeaTime Pictures. Crissy joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about writing climate fiction, naming characters, research, fictionalizing real places, setting, and much more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It's stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you'll find an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It's perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners! Order Barbara's upcoming short story collection, Pool Fishing. (Recorded on August 15, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

In today's solo episode, Lindsay is sharing a creative writing activism unit that educators can use and implement with their students. Hope you enjoy!     Liked this episode? Rate, review, and share!   Get Your Episode Freebie & More Resources On My Website: https://www.lindsaybethlyons.com/blog/224

In this episode of The Via Stoica Podcast, Benny and Brendan speak with Dr. Ranjini George, a writer, teacher, and scholar who bridges the worlds of East and West. Formerly an Associate Professor of English at Zayed University in Dubai, and now teaching Creative Writing and Arts & Humanities at the University of Toronto, Dr. George brings decades of experience exploring the overlap between philosophy, literature, and lived practice.We trace her journey from growing up in India and Kenya, to teaching in Oman and Dubai, to immigrating to Canada, where she began weaving meditation, Buddhism, and Stoicism into her teaching and writing. Dr. George shares how Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and Thich Nhat Hanh's writings became constant companions, how Donald Robertson's How to Think Like a Roman Emperor deepened her Stoic path, and why she believes both traditions offer a daily, practical way to train the mind.The conversation explores where Buddhism and Stoicism align, in mindfulness, compassion, and resilience, and where they diverge. We talk about journaling as a form of self-inquiry, the importance of suffering “intelligently,” and what it means to pursue meaningful work without being consumed by comparison or self-cherishing. Dr. George also reflects on her books Through My Mother's Window and her works-in-progress, Blue Flowers and Miracle of Flowers, and how storytelling itself can be a philosophical act.Whether you are drawn to Buddhism, Stoicism, or simply the search for a good life, this episode offers insight into building your own philosophy of life with compassion, wisdom, and presence.You can explore Dr. Ranjini George's novel excerpt on Modern Stoicism: https://modernstoicism.com/blue-flowers-novel-excerpt-by-ranjini-george/You can also find her teaching at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies: https://learn.utoronto.caSupport the showhttps://viastoica.comhttps://viastoica.com/stoic-life-coachinghttps://viastoica.com/benny-vonckenhttps://viastoica.com/brendan-hoglehttps://x.com/ViaStoicainfo@viastoica.comProduced by: http://badmic.com

It is a pleasure to welcome award-winning writer Tim Cummings to The Jake's Take with Jacob Elyachar Podcast.  Tim is the author of the multiple-award-winning coming-of-age novel, Alice the Cat, published by Fitzroy Books. It was chosen as an American Book Awards 'Best Book' Finalist for 2023, received a Bronze Medal in the 2024 Feathered Quill Book Awards, and is a Finalist in both the 2024 National Indies Excellence Awards for Teen Fiction and the Independent Author Network's Book of the Year Awards. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and a BFA from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts.Since 1984, he has appeared in over 200 projects across theatre, film, television, voice-over, and new media. Recent publications of short fiction, essays, and poetry include F(r)iction, Scare Street, Lunch Ticket, MeowMeow PowPow, From Whispers to Roars, Drunk Monkeys, Hare's Paw, Lit Angels, and Critical Read/RAFT, for which he won the ‘Origins' contest for his essay, “You Have Changed Me Forever.” He teaches writing for UCLA Extension Writers' Program, The Townies Inc. in Ojai, runs private workshops, and coaches authors. He lives in Los Angeles with his partner of 19 years and their dog. Tim grew up with a severely epileptic brother. His name was Matthew. They shared a room growing up. The seizure scenes in The Lightning People Play between Kirby and Baxter are drawn from real life. Matthew succumbed to epilepsy in the summer of 1997 when he died of complications caused by a grand-mal seizure. He was 26. With this story, Tim manifested a different destiny for Matthew–and for his heart. On this episode of The Jake's Take with Jacob Elyachar Podcast, Tim Cummings shared his origin story and how both Alice the Cat and The Lightning People Play teach essential life lessons to its readers.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jake-s-take-with-jacob-elyachar--4112003/support.

Nell Stevens is an award-winning author of memoir and fiction. Her work has been awarded the Somerset Maugham Award, longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted by the BBC National Short Story Award. She is the author of two novels, The Original and Briefly, a Delicious Life, and two memoirs: Bleaker House and Mrs Gaskell & Me. Her writing is published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Granta and elsewhere. Nell is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. Nell lives in Oxfordshire with her wife and two children. Recommended Books: Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead Ali Smith, Gliff Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nell Stevens is an award-winning author of memoir and fiction. Her work has been awarded the Somerset Maugham Award, longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted by the BBC National Short Story Award. She is the author of two novels, The Original and Briefly, a Delicious Life, and two memoirs: Bleaker House and Mrs Gaskell & Me. Her writing is published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Granta and elsewhere. Nell is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. Nell lives in Oxfordshire with her wife and two children. Recommended Books: Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead Ali Smith, Gliff Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Nell Stevens is an award-winning author of memoir and fiction. Her work has been awarded the Somerset Maugham Award, longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted by the BBC National Short Story Award. She is the author of two novels, The Original and Briefly, a Delicious Life, and two memoirs: Bleaker House and Mrs Gaskell & Me. Her writing is published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Granta and elsewhere. Nell is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. Nell lives in Oxfordshire with her wife and two children. Recommended Books: Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead Ali Smith, Gliff Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

“Spirit World” by Karter Rowe Manawaker Patreon: https://patreon.com/manawaker/ Manawaker store: https://payhip.com/Manawaker Manawaker Discord: https://discord.gg/zjzA2pY9f9 More info / Contact CB Droege: https://cbdroege.taplink.ws The Flash Fiction Podcast Theme Song is by Kevin McCleod The Producer, Editor, and Narrator of the podcast is CB Droege Bio for this weeks author: Karter Rowe is a New Weird/Science Fiction writer from rural southern Queensland in Australia. A high-school dropout, Karter holds a Bacherlor’s and a Graduate degree in Creative Writing with a Masters in progress. Karter makes a living through warehousing but loves working on his fiction whenever he gets the a spare moment.

Send us a textMoms, get ready to be encouraged! I have Jodi Hendricks on the show today, author of #NoFilter: Unmasking the Woman God Created you to Be, and she has a special message just for you. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all that's on your momma plate, thinking you don't have what it takes to "do it all"? Are you exhausted by all the "shoulds" in your life, feeling like you don't measure up? Is your vision of yourself and your calling as a mom a little fuzzy? Jodi brings a clear message of our worth in Christ and how that changes the way we live out our callings as moms. Listen in as Jodi shares her personal story and her powerful book, you'll be encouraged and inspired. There is no doubt: The Almighty God who created you has a Good plan and purpose for your life, and He finds you beautiful just as you are. Just as He created you - unmasked and without any filters.  Meet Jodi Hendricks: the author of #NoFilter: Unmasking the Woman God Created You to Be! Jodi is a passionate writer, speaker, and advocate who has dedicated her life to helping women embrace their God-given identity, free from the filters of insecurity, societal pressure, and past wounds. A wife and mother of four, Jodi's journey has been anything but ordinary. Growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she pursued her love for storytelling and communication at Bob Jones University, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and a Master of Arts in Interpretative Speech. Later, she continued her education at Wayland Baptist University, where she earned a Master of Arts in Counseling and went on to serve as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, helping women navigate challenges like anxiety, depression, and mood disorders. She now serves as Executive Director of New Mexico Family Action Movement (NMFAM), where she works to advocate for biblical values in public policy. Jodi's passion for God's Word, her heart for women's ministry, and her unique ability to connect biblical truth to everyday life make her an inspiring voice for those seeking authenticity and spiritual growth. Join Jodi on this journey of unmasking the woman God created you to be—imperfections and all!  Follow along as she shares insights and encouragement: http://jodihendricks.com/ Love this episode? Leave a positive rating/review by scrolling down to the bottom of this page. Your reviews are so important and so appreciated! Please share this episode with a friend ❤️ For more information and helpful resources, visit our websites at: https://www.karenferg.com/ https://www.sandrakaychambers.com/ Find our books on Amazon: Karen Ferguson: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Karen-Ferguson/author/B075SHZ1WV?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true Sandra Chambers: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Sandra-Chambers/author/B00OHLARMO?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1740085397&sr=1-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM! @karenfergusonauthor @sandrakaychambers.com

Applying writing skills to business development w/Kelsey BanerjeeContent Writer & Nonprofit CEOKelsey Banerjee is a finance content writer and strategist, and the CEO of an international disaster aid nonprofit aiming to share success strategies and pitfalls she's learned along the way.I have over a decade of experience writing content and content strategies for clients across industries while living in the US and India. I've also taken on a veteran-founded nonprofit that operates internationally and domestically.Links:www.kelseycopywriter.comwww.pathfinderxgi.com,Tags:Content Marketing,Creative Writing,Disaster Relief,Language Learning,Non-Profit,Writing,Live Video Podcast Interview,Phantom Electric Ghost Podcast,Podcast,InterviewSupport PEG by checking out our Sponsors:Download and use Newsly for free now from www.newsly.me or from the link in the description, and use promo code “GHOST” and receive a 1-month free premium subscription.The best tool for getting podcast guests:https://podmatch.com/signup/phantomelectricghostSubscribe to our Instagram for exclusive content:https://www.instagram.com/expansive_sound_experiments/Subscribe to our YouTube https://youtube.com/@phantomelectricghost?si=rEyT56WQvDsAoRprRSShttps://anchor.fm/s/3b31908/podcast/rssSubstackhttps://substack.com/@phantomelectricghost?utm_source=edit-profile-page

Whatever kind of story you're writing, if you want a reader to stick with you all the way to the end, you've got to build tension! Believe it or not, The Bourne Identity is a terrific example to study - even for a love story or coming of age story. Get The Fundamentals of Storytelling today! Go to storynerd.ca/courses and use coupon code CANADA50, now through July 7, for 50% off. For access to writing templates and worksheets, and more than 70 hours of training (all for free), subscribe to Valerie's Inner Circle.To learn to read like a writer, visit Melanie's website.

Creativity through the lens of an Author and Actor"Creativity feels like a life line, like another vein in my body."Tim Cummings is the author of the multiple-award-winning coming-of-age novel, Alice the Cat, published by Fitzroy Books. It was chosen as an American Book Awards 'Best Book' Finalist for 2023, received a Bronze Medal in the 2024 Feathered Quill Book Awards, and is a Finalist in both the 2024 National Indies Excellence Awards for Teen Fiction and the Independent Author Network's Book of the Year Awards. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and a BFA from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. Since 1984, he has appeared in over 200 projects across theatre, film, television, voice-over, and new media. Recent publications of short fiction, essays, and poetry include F(r)iction, Scare Street, Lunch Ticket, MeowMeow PowPow, From Whispers to Roars, Drunk Monkeys, Hare's Paw, Lit Angels, and Critical Read/RAFT, for which he won the ‘Origins' contest for his essay, “You Have Changed Me Forever.” He teaches writing for UCLA Extension Writers' Program, The Townies Inc in Ojai, runs private workshops, and coaches authors. He lives in Los Angeles with his partner of 19 years and their dog. Website: timcummings.ink  InstagramSend us a text

On this week's episode, I had the joy of talking with writer Arisa White and visual artist Daniel Minter about their new public artworks, both of which were commissioned by Indigo Arts Alliance and the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens on the occasion of the Deconstructing the Boundaries: Tending to Communities symposium this summer. Daniel Minter is an acclaimed American artist, recognized primarily for his work in painting and assemblage, whose themes often focus on experiences of displacement and diaspora. Minter's creative journey is deeply informed by extensive travel across Africa and worldwide destinations of the African Diaspora. Minter's work has been featured in and acquired by numerous esteemed institutions and galleries, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Portland Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Charles H. Wright Museum, Bowdoin College Art Museum, Farnsworth Art Museum, The David C. Driskell Center, and more.Arisa White is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College. She is the author of Who's Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers. In collaboration with composer Jessica Jones, Post Pardon: The Opera is Arisa's librettist debut. Her poetry is widely published, and her collections have been nominated for an NAACP Image Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Per Diem Poetry Prize, the Maine Literary Award, the Nautilus Book Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and the Golden Crown Literary Award.  As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that are rooted in Black queer women's ways of knowing. She is a Cave Canem fellow and serves on the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Community Advisory Board. White was a Mentorship Artist-in-Residence with Indigo Arts Alliance in 2022.To learn more about Indigo Arts Alliance, visit here.This episode was produced with support from Indigo Arts Alliance. Follow the show on IG at @theartofitallshow and follow the host at @dariasimoneharper! Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Sharing an episode with a friend never hurts either;)

Shannon Sky is a poet, author, photographer, publisher, and activist born in Chicago. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.  Shannon is an off the radar, gender queer, underground poet. She previously worked in electoral politics, successfully advocated for juvenile justice reform laws in Chicago, lobbied Congress to fund public health care, and currently consults on green environmental projects.  She is the founder of Latter-day Beat Books. A world traveler, Shannon has explored all 50 states and 35 countries on four continents.

Amy Mackin joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about the disability landscape and advocating for our children, special education and early intervention, struggling to get kids the help they need, parental guilt and shame, mom rage,  flexible education programs, balancing how we write about loved ones, changing names for privacy, showing the parts of us that are really cranky, wondering if we're getting it wrong, beginning a memoir in MFA program, using a hybrid memoir form, placing work in literary journals, trusting our intuition and voice, staying true to our own style and vision, and her new memoir Henry's Classroom: A “Special” Education in American Motherhood.   Also in this episode: -family and gender roles -feeling as if we don't fit in -conflicting feedback from agents   Books mentioned in this episode: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion Lit by Mary Karr Mom Rage by Minna Dubin Screaming on the Inside by Jessica Grose books by Barbara Ehrenreich books by Nora Ephron   Amy Mackin writes at the intersection of education, cultural history, public health, and social equity. Her essays have been featured in The Atlantic, Chalkbeat, The Washington Post, Literary Mama, The Writers Chronicle, The Shriver Report, and elsewhere. She earned her MA in American Studies from the University of Massachusetts and her MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her new memoir is Henry's Classroom: A “Special” Education in American Motherhood from Apprentice House/Loyola University Press.    Connect with Amy: Website: www.amymackin.com Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/AmyMackinWriter/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amymackin/ X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/mackinwriting Get the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/henry-s-classroom-a-special-education-in-american-motherhood-a-memoir-amy-mackin/22134318?ean=9781627205726&next=t&affiliate=109363   – Ronit's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer's Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories.  She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit's Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social   Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

This week marks the beginning of our August round-ups where we choose our favorite episodes from the prior year as we gear up for our new season. We're revisiting two of our personal favorite authors and subjects: craft. Tune into Jane Alison and Jeannine Ouellette to glean insight and inspiration about your writing and the structures, forms, playfulness, and directions it can take when you're attuned to all the possibilities and permutations. Don't miss Janet Fitch's August 19th class. Details are online here. Jane Alison is the author of four novels, as well as Change Me, translations of Ovid's stories of sexual transformation, and Meander, Spiral, Explode, about the craft and theory of writing. Her newest novel is Villa E, about the collision of architects Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier. She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. Jeannine Ouellette is the author of the bestselling Substack Writing in the Dark, a creative community of almost 18K people strong. Her lyric memoir, The Part That Burns, was a 2021 Kirkus Best Indie Book and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award in Women's Literature, and her essays and short fiction have appeared widely in anthologies and journals, including Narrative, North American Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"I have said these things to you so that you may have peace. In the world, you will have trouble. But take heart; I have overcome the world." -John 16:33   Welcome to The Adoption & Foster Care Journey—a podcast to encourage, educate and equip you as you care for children in crisis through adoption, foster care and kinship care.   On this episode, host Sandra Flach talks with adoptive mom, Kayla Moffitt. Kayla is totally and completely…. exhausted! As a mom to 5 siblings who spent years in the foster care system, her days are spent sipping unintended cold coffee in the carpool line and folding tiny t-shirts while searching for every single left sock– she has plenty of right ones if you need them! Kayla holds a BA in Creative Writing and an MA in English Language. She works as the Communications Coordinator for Foster the Family where her passion for advocating in the foster care and adoption space is fiercely fueled.   Listen in to Sandra and Kayla's conversation on Episode 491 wherever you get your podcasts.   Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and share it on your social media. Links mentioned in this episode: justicefororphansny.org justicefororphansny.org/hope-community     Email:  sandraflach@justicefororphansny.org sandraflach.com Orphans No More—A Journey Back to the Father book on amazon.com fosterthefamily.org Kayla's Instagram: makingthemoffitts Kayla's Facebook: Kayla Clark Moffitt

Send us a textWin Kelly Charles is not your typical advocate. Born with cerebral palsy and battling undiagnosed depression for years, she's now a powerful voice breaking stigmas and rebuilding support systems—one conversation at a time. In this raw and heartfelt episode, Win shares how a traumatic back surgery brought her hidden struggles with anxiety and depression to the surface.Through humor, honesty, and fierce self-advocacy, she opens up about the emotional toll of living with disability, the role her faith and church community play, and what the world often gets wrong about mental health. A published author of 12 books and the host of the A Winning Heart podcast, Win proves that passion and purpose aren't limited by physical ability—they're defined by action.

Amy is joined by Dr. Marina Warner to revisit her book, Alone of All Her Sex, getting expert insight into the history of the Virgin Mary, her evolution and multitude of meanings, unrealistic religious standards, and what it takes for a woman to become a myth.Donate to Breaking Down PatriarchyMarina Warner is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her many award-winning non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publications, including The London Review of Books, the Sunday Times, and Vogue. She is also a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. In 2017, she was elected president of the Royal Society of Literature, the first time the role has been held by a woman since the founding of the Royal Society of Literature in 1820. She is also a Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.