#107. Special Feature Celebrating Brainstoryum Writers—and How to Satisfy Your Readers with Your Story’s Central “Truth”

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Show notes: Link to Spotlight Indie author feature: Guest Post – Anna Tizard – Spotlight Indie
The list of categories for the second round of brainstorms (chosen with a roll of the dice) is: 1) a book or magazine 2) a job or role, taken on reluctantly, 3) a pub or café, 4) a portal or means of travel, 5) a piece of treasure or magical, sought-after object, 6) a monster or creature, 7) an invention, 8) a weapon, 9) a hidden identity or disguise, 10) a scar (physical or psychological), 11) a ghost, or 12) or a cocktail or special tea (which, let’s face it, is likely to be a magic potion or poison)

Hello imaginative people. I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 107 of Brainstoryum.
 
First, just a quick update on what’s going on with me in the build up to the release of my next book, Weird Creatures. This morning, at time of recording, I have just submitted my request to my cover designer, Emily’s World of Design. It feels like a major milestone. (I had to write the blurb for this. I am not good at writing blurbs!) It only remains for me to finish editing the manuscript by the end of May so I can send it off to Heather, my editor. It’s all happening, people! Those who are subscribed to my private email list (which anyone can join at annatizard.com, just don’t forget to hit that “confirm” button when it lands in your spam), you will see the early concepts and design options that Emily produces for the cover, probably within a few days of the release of this show. I have very specific ideas this time, which I think is always helpful, for a cover designer, but I think Emily’s main challenge this time round will be the length of title, because I’m going to extend it beyond just Weird Creatures. But more on that next time—in fact, in the next show, I’ll be announcing the contributors of words that made the Exquisite Corpses that inspired the stories in the book—because it is jam-packed full of stories told by the narrator: the tea witch, Eswilda. All will be revealed next time.
 
In the meantime, I’ve also been busy with other things that celebrate the achievements of other writers who’ve sent in stories, ideas and poems to Brainstoryum, and who help make this such a collaborative, active platform for creative writing and inspiration.
 
Back in March, the Spotlight Indie team at spotlightindie.co.uk got in touch with me, saying they were looking for articles that feature other indie authors: so indie authors promoting other indie authors. And I thought, well, that’s perfect, because of the writers who respond to prompts from Brainstoryum. Now, this was back in March so there are people who have since written in with stories who I’ve not been able to include, and I had to pick out the top (well, I think they were looking for maybe 4 or 5 but I managed to get in 6): I’ve been in touch with each of the 6 writers who’ve sent the most stories or poems to the show over the last couple of years, so you already know who you are. They are: Eric Montgomery, Paul Monteith, Nick Vracar, Alessandro Bozzo, Elena Dennison and Paul McMillan.
 
The way I’ve framed the article is to introduce Brainstoryum and what I do on there, and why, posing the question, Has everything been written before? And how can we as writers strive to be original when there’s so much out there already? I talk about my addiction to surprises; how creativity loves a playful state of mind, which is the kind of atmosphere I try to draw you into on this podcast.
 
Then I talk about each of the 6 featured authors in turn, giving examples of stories or poems they’ve written for the show, and their particular talents and flairs for storytelling.
 
Also, the article includes author bios with pictures giving links to where you find those writers, so all in all, a great opportunity to feature and help promote my fellow indies—and a small way to say “thankyou” for making this show what it is. Because it still gives me goosebumps to realise that I’ve helped inspire you to write something you might never otherwise have written.
 
The article is now live on the Spotlight Indie website. The link is in the show notes, but if you Google Spotlight Indie + anna tizard you’ll probably find it easily enough.
 
This is also a kind of stepping stone to the launch of Brainstoryum Emporium, a new webpage (which I know I’ve talked about) where I will feature authors who’ve had their Brainstoryum-inspired stories or poems published, with links to find them. The page is up, it exists; it just has a “coming soon” message on it.
 
*
Well, I had lots of creative and intriguing responses to the prompts from the last show, mostly based on “the nihilistic mandrake”.
 
I had a response from a newcomer, Mark on Twitter (welcome to the show, Mark, and yes, I still call it Twitter as well). Mark wrote:

“When a desperate apothecary unearthed a mandrake by moonlight, he approached trembling, his ears stuffed loosely with spent candle- wax.
 
The mandrake sighed. “Not another one.”
 
The apothecary pulled. Soil loosened. The infamous scream rang across the field ~ long, terrible, unnatural.
 
The apothecary collapsed weeping into the mud. “What does it mean?” he whispered. “What dreadful truth have you seen beneath the earth?”
 
The mandrake stared at him with small, wearied eyes. “That everything dies,” it said. “Most things are forgotten. And somehow people still insist on attending harvest festivals.”
 
The apothecary blinked. “That’s it?”
 
“That’s it.”
 
The church bells sounded midnight. The mandrake looked faintly embarrassed. “To be honest,” it added, “I mostly scream because being unceremoniously ripped from the ground really hurts.”
 
This is brilliant. Neatly tied up . Thank you, Mark on Twitter.
 
Paul McMillan wrote:
 
“A nihilistic mandrake once told me that roots are a lot like emotional baggage. At first that sounded profound, but then I remembered he was literally a root. Every few years he performed a ritual where he cut away part of himself to symbolize letting go of the past. He explained this while sitting in mud and glaring at the moon. I asked him if he was afraid.
 
“Of course,” he said. “What if suffering is all that defines me?”
 
That seemed unusually deep for something commonly stolen by witches. The mandrake held a tiny knife over one crooked root and hesitated. “That root contains my bitterness,” he whispered.
 
“Shouldn’t you keep that one?” I asked.
 
He thought about it for a long time. “You know,” he said, “without bitterness I might actually become pleasant.”
 
Neither of us liked that possibility. Still, he cut the root away. For several minutes he screamed so loudly that nearby owls flew into trees seeking shelter. Then he sat quietly.
 
Finally, he sighed and said, “I feel lighter.”
 
That’s when a rabbit ran past carrying the severed root in its mouth. The mandrake stared at it for a moment before saying:
 
“Honestly, that feels metaphorical.”
 
Sometimes growth is beautiful, and sometimes it’s just a rabbit stealing your bitterness.”
 
Good grief, this is utterly profound, and funny at the same time. I don’t know how you did that, in such a short space. Amazing. Thank you, Paul.
 
You can find Paul McMillan on X as Bookmarksloveandlore.
 
Switching to a much lighter tone, the self-named Village Idiot on X sent me not so much a story but a kind of thought experiment on the possible meaning of the word “mandrake”. He wrote:
 
“The definition of “Drake” is a male duck, which makes “Mandrake” a male male duck. This double negative grammatical construct demands that “Mandrake” is to be a female duck. This is positively the only logical outcome to this debate. But you probably don’t even give a *QUACK*”
 
Thank you, Village Idiot, there is always room for humour on this show, and a bit of wordplay. Sometimes words get stranger the more you pull their meanings apart.
 
Paul Monteith wrote a story based on the combination: The Shadowy Guard & The Nihilistic Mandrake
 
“A guard carried a potted mandrake along a corridor. "Murder Mandrake, finally behind bars," the guard said. Mandrake leaned in to listen, for the guard's voice was as insubstantial as a phantom.

"I'm no murderer," he replied. "I didn't kill intentionally. A serial killer is motivated by control and psychological issues. I'm unclouded by conscience or delusions of morality. I kill with indifference. The victims just happened to be in my way."

"You think you are better because you kill without emotion?" hushed the shadow, his voice as thin as a light breeze.

"I merely removed obstacles impeding my progress."

Mandrake noticed that it wasn't just the guard's voice that was thinning. His form had become a smudge hanging in the air, his features blurred. And he had no eyes, just empty sockets. At the sight of him, Mandrake felt a thrill of ice-cold shivers race down his taproot.

They passed cells full of stolen goods. Beyond were the shrieks and screams of victims, among them the quivering cries of children calling out for their mum.

They arrived at a cell where a choir of disembodied voices pricked Mandrake like ice-cold needles.

"Your quarters," the shadow said.

"I want a private cell," Mandrake snapped.

"You'll share with those who impeded your progress." The shadowy guard pushed the potted plant into the cell, which churned with a primal desire to retaliate.

As the shadow faded away, it smiled wickedly and said, "Y'all play nice with each other, you hear?"
 
Oh, that is such a chilling twist at the end. You’re faced with this emotionless murderer, this monster, and you think that’s the worst thing possible—but the shadowy guard, and all of Mandrake’s victims, get their revenge.
 
Thank you, Paul. You can find Paul Monteith on Bluesky as Quantum Fairy and if you’re not on Bluesky, his linktree is linktr.ee/MostlyPaul.
 
Right, it is time to chase the white rabbit once more down the twisting tunnels of our imaginations. Bring forth the Socks of Destiny!  
 
**
SOCKS OF DESTINY ORGAN JINGLE
 
This part of the show is un-transpose-able! There's much giggling and rustling of paper as I pull words at random from the Socks of Destiny to create three unique sentences according to the rules of Exquisite Corpse, going: “Describing word—noun—action—describing word—noun.” Today’s resulting sentences are:
 
1. The pointed headless horseman was stuck in a portal with the tranquil game developer.
2. The fruminous (extremely angry) bean nighe (washerwoman in Scottish folklore, an omen of death) granted a singular wish to the shallow crow.
3. The cacophonous calligrapher mangled a cheesecake with the luminous Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.
**
But which one shall I choose? I lingered a bit over the one about the game developer getting stuck in a portal of her own making, but I think I like the middle one best, where this Scottish washerwoman, the bean nighe (“ben neeya”) grants a wish to this shallow crow. Why shallow? What is his real reason for coming here? He’s been watching the washerwoman from afar, wondering at whose death she portends…
 
Let’s roll the dice and find out how to push this story forward with a category of suggestion (check the show notes for the 12 categories if you’d like to see them all).
 
(Rolls dice.) 11. A ghost.
 
You know, I had this feeling, before rolling the dice, that maybe someone is already dead. That this other character who shape-shifts between human form and crow form, has already lost his crow form: that his crow self has died. But now, with this “ghost” suggestion, I’m starting to think about other possible ideas we could try. What if, at the beginning of the story, the reader has no idea that this tall, skinny man with the jet black hair who walks rather awkwardly, like he’s unused to these long legs (maybe he even hops a bit, like the crow form he’s used to taking) – we have no idea that he is in fact a ghost. Maybe he doesn’t know he is a ghost: this could be a twist we build up to revealing. Sometimes stories can begin like this, with a sense of the ending, in which case you might even want to write the ending first…
 
But the way the story unfolds… Maybe he recognises his own jacket that the washerwoman is washing in the river—because, as the myth goes, the washerwoman is washing the clothes of whoever is about to die. So this is what draws him to her, to check what he’s seeing, and to question her. How long does he have left?
 
But she speaks in riddles, of clothes worn but not worn out; of the river flowing on with or without your preferred form; of the different shapes your clothes will morph into when you shake them in the water. How fabric flows freely when it dips into the water, and how heavy and cumbersome it is when taken out of it.
 
Is she hinting at metaphors about life, or death? He gets impatient. But, from the smirk that spreads on her thin lips, that was probably her intention, so he might demand as he’s demands now:
 
“When am I to die? Is there no hope for me?”
 
(Rolls dice.) 8. A weapon.
 
What’s that about? Does he attack her? So frustrated at her evasive replies, her cackling laughter, even as she pulls his jacket out of the water and holds it up, the blood stains still dripping from the hem, that he dives for her, hands clawed to grab for her neck. But she doesn’t move, just smiles on, as he lurches towards her—and straight through her, into the river.
 
“It’s too late,” she calls after him. That’s when he realises (and we realise) that he was already dead; just a ghost.
 
But what of his crow self? Does it fly free? Somewhere between the worlds of the living and the dead? Maybe that could be part of the mythology about crows in this world: that they straddle both realms. If you dropped in a hint of this at the beginning, just a subtle hint, then revealed this at the end, that would make the story have that cyclical feel, of satisfaction. You might get an “Oh, yeah” from your reader, which is always a good thing. I’ll often do this: you write “so far” into story, discovering it along with the way, then you stumble into a sort of “nugget of truth” that seems to tie things together. To round off the story in the most effective way, you go back to the beginning and plant a little seed of it, so when that “story truth” is revealed at the end, it feels like the answer to a question, even if that question wasn’t explicitly posed.
 
*
Right, well, we’ve had some intriguing word combinations come up today: from the pointed headless horseman, the tranquil game developer, the cacophonous calligrapher (hey, maybe they’ve become extremely sensitive to sound, so even the scratching of their pen is agony?), but the ones I like the most are the fruminous (extremely angry) bean nighe/ ben neeya (ominous washerwoman) who grants a singular wish to the shallow crow.
But of course, you could take either of those word combinations or concepts on their own and do something with them: I didn’t really explore why or how the cry might be shallow, so that’s a possibility all on its own.
 
You know what to do: go to annatizard.com, hit the “submit” button on any page footer and give me up to 250 words on any of these prompts. There’s an option to type in which prompt you’re responding to; there’s also an opportunity to give a website or social media handle that I can quote when I read out your story or poem so other listeners can look you up.
 
And last but not least: some publishing opportunities.
 
Cryptic Frog Publishing has a quarterly litmag, but it is now accepting submissions for its first-ever anthology, tentatively titled Endless Archives, Entrancing Tomes. For this collection, they’re looking for speculative fiction that has some kind of supernatural or futuristic library or book as a central component to the story. They say, “Entertain us and bring us your originality.” The word count is from 2000 to 7,500 words. Accepted authors will receive an ebook copy of the completed book plus $10 payment.
 
They expect to publish by the end of the year, and submissions will be open until at least October, so plenty of time to cook something up for that one. See their website for the full prompt and examples of the type of thing they’re looking for at crypticfrogpublishing.wordpress.com
 
Story Unlikely is a monthly E-zine showcasing fiction and creative non-fiction, and this year they have started to produce an annual anthology in print. You can become a member for free and they will email you a E-zine once a month; there are also paid memberships where you get more. They’ve have just re-opened for general submissions, and this open period runs from 14th February to 14th October. They pay 8 cents a word, or 1-2 cents a word for reprints. Their upper word limit is 7,500 words for both fiction and creative non-fiction. All featured stories are professionally illustrated (by real, human artists!). They do have some quite gorgeous looking covers, so worth having a look. Go to storyunlikely.com.
 
As you’ve probably guessed, I don’t have any personal experience of these publishers and I’m just reading out what I have come across in the wilds of the internet. Whoever you choose to submit to, always run a check on Google for reviews and comments, and read the terms and conditions of publication to ensure they suit you.
 
Right! I hope that’s given you some inspiration. As ever, if (well, I want to say “when”) you publish any story that was sparked by a prompt on the show, tell me about it, pronto! And I will feature you on Brainstoryum Emporium.
 
Until next time, go forth and be inspired!