This week we welcome special guest and friend of the show, Karen Osborne! Karen is the author of The Memory War duology (Architects of Memory & Engines of Oblivion). If you enjoy a fresh take on aliens, first contact, and artificial intelligence, you should grab these books and take a deep dive into their world.

With Karen blasting toward science fiction, we shift our focus to technologies of the future and what some technologies might mean for children & parenthood. We tap dance around sinister ideas about manipulation and childhood before settling on a story about how parents can game the educational system to enter the multiverse of their dreams.

Digressions include: corporations don't love us (so we don't love them), how details build a setting, time changes hometowns, science and art both involve squishy feelings, revision is like adaptation, children: actually people, and we're keeping the dog!

Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a special announcement about the future of Story Kernels!

Today’s Prompt System:

100 Prompts for Science Fiction Writers by Leslie and Jarod Anderson

What’s Been Inspiring Us Lately:

• Every Bone a Prayer by Ashley Blooms
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimerrer
• The Umbrella Academy (trailer)

External Links:

• Virginia Company
• America’s Company Towns, Then and Now (via Smithsonian Magazine)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation (credits)
• CompuServe
• Babylon 5 (credits)
• DON'T TOUCH THAT!: A Sci-Fi and Fantasy Parenting Anthology edited by Jaymee Goh
• Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop
• Why Google Glass Failed… And Why It's Coming Back (video)
• Cocomelon
• Into the Spider-Verse, an exploration of multiversal memes (via Tumblr)
• We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker

Music: Cherryblossom by Raptorface is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

Have you ever wondered what to do with a main character you just want to punch in the face? How about one who can't seem to fail? Alli and KL! develop a story with a punchable hero, an unexpected Zombie King, an impossible choice, and the sacrifices that must be made when the whole world is covered in fire. Then we answer your questions about how the heck to choose an ending for your story, using structure and theme as your guide—you don't want to miss it!

Digressions include: serialized fiction and new-old ways to tell stories, everything is zombieable (including bears), predestination, separating bodies and consciousness, and stories that come too close to being very relatable content.

Don't forget to check out the new Caramel Corn pledge tier for personalized tarot prompts at the Story Kernels Patreon. (Alli & KL are not professional tarot readers, but they are excellent at using non-standard tools for story inspiration.)

Today’s Prompt System:

Shadowscapes tarot deck by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

What’s Been Inspiring Us Lately:

• Social Media AUs
• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

External Links:

• Garden of Gethsemane
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier (video with fisticuff violence)
• A Very Bearable Room (Repeating Bears comic)
• The story behind Hans Christian Andersen writing "The Little Mermaid" (Twitter thread)
• Donnie Darko (metaphysical path scene)
• Hero's Journey: Refusal of the Call (video explanation)
• John Calvin
• Write What You Know
• Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
• How to End a Story Right: 13 Tips Every Author Should Know
• Story Structures: The Fundamentals You Need to Know

Music: Cherryblossom by Raptorface is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

If you want to help support the podcast and receive additional inspiration, check out our Patreon.

This week's story asks, "what happens when a naive woman in her 30s and a time-traveling woman in her 50s love each other very, very much?" The answer is they try to stop the Victorians from eating mummies. Listen in as Alli becomes unhinged about time travel and Victorians, and everyone is a lesbian. In addition to our quest to develop a story, we also respond to listener messages about our first episode. Thanks for writing in!

Digressions include: gendered languages; KL's musical interludes; time travel devices, rules, and limitations; the ghostliness of cassette tapes; ugh, colonialism; and pufferfish art.

Today’s Prompt System:

Plot Generator from writingexercises.co.uk

What’s Been Inspiring Us Lately:

• Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
• A Potpourri of Icelandic Poetry Through Eleven Centuries, edited by Hallberg Hallmundsson
• The Allusionist Podcast

External Links:

• Wonderwall by Oasis (music video)
• They're Lesbians, Harold (meme)
• The Price of Salt (or Carol) by Patricia Highsmith
• Cassette tapes
• Terminator time travel sequence (video - warnings for nudity, language, and violence)
• 1890s Fashion (you better believe Alli already had a link for this)
• Rockabilly Fashion
• Kyber crystals (probably not used for time travel)
• The Time Machine time travel sequence (video)
• Mummies and the Usefulness of Death
• The Mummy (trailer)
• Damien Williams' blog, "A Future Worth Thinking About"

Music: Cherryblossom by Raptorface is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. 

If you want to help support the podcast and receive additional inspiration, check out our Patreon.

This week KL! and Alli get washed away by a romance for the ages and also grapple with whether or not stardust can get blood stains out of our whites. We discuss the myth of the Washer at the Ford, the lengths we’ll go to to protect those we love, and if fate can tell if you’re committed enough to murdering a guy. Then we answer your questions about how to maintain focus in your writing. (Advice which is not reflected in the meandering content of this podcast episode.)

Digressions include: unreliable narrators, KL!’s dream Batman film, and love (re: hurts, scars, wounds, and marks).

Alli recorded the first half of this episode inside of a tin can, so please excuse the unusual audio quality.

Today’s Prompt System:

The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures by John and Caitlín Matthews

What’s Been Inspiring Us Lately:

• Dracula Daily
• Moon Knight

External Links:

• Jonathan Harker in Frankenstein
• Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Gutenberg.org link)
• Fight Club (trailer)
• Memento (trailer)
• Unreliable narrators
• "The Ghost of You" by My Chemical Romance
• What If…? (trailer)
• Batman: Wayne Family Adventures (which is essentially the kind of Batman movie KL! needs in the world)
• Guinevere (and Lancelot)
• "Blaze of Glory" by Jon Bon Jovi
• What is grief if not love persevering? (video)
• "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce (Gutenberg.org link)
• Pomodoro Technique

Music: Cherryblossom by Raptorface is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

If you want to help support the podcast and receive additional inspiration, check out our Patreon.

This week we welcome (and summarily terrify) special guest and friend of the show, Nanci Schwartz! Nanci is the author of the forthcoming Robber Barrons Trilogy from Aethon Books, which will hit our hot little hands September 13th. Be sure to pre-order it if you can!

With Nanci in the cockpit, our thoughts turn to outer space. We take a fantastic voyage to the moon to discover what’s hiding in the perfect dark. Digressions include: what KL doesn’t know about physics could fill a moon, night science, when we learn we’re afraid of the dark, whether or not Nanci will ever sleep again, and elongated men.

Today’s Prompt System:

Rory’s Story Cubes distributed by Zygomatic studios

What’s Been Inspiring Us Lately:

• Loki Soundtrack (TVA Theme especially)
• Fringe (trailer)
• Stranger Music by Leonard Cohen

External Links:

• Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Bluey (video)
• Mandela Effect
• Le voyage dans la lune by Georges Méliès (video)
• Moon's First Friends: One Giant Leap for Friendship written by Susanna Leonard Hill & illustrated by Elisa Paganelli
• Moon’s haunted (meme)
• For All Mankind (trailer)
• Stargate: SG-1 (trailer)
• Contact “They should have sent a poet.” (video)
• The Season of Passage by Christopher Pike
• RayBan ad from the late 90s with the vampires (video)
• Slender Man
• The Expanse (trailer)
• The X-Files “Tombs” (video)

Music: Cherryblossom by Raptorface is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

If you want to help support the podcast and receive additional inspiration, check out our Patreon.

This week, KL! and Alli delve into the most universal parts of the human condition by trying to unravel the motivations of hope, despair, and semi-sentient alien trees who just want to give back to the planet that originally made them. How should humans act when confronted with a climate crisis so imminent that there’s nothing to lose?

Digressions include: KL!’s Lord and Savior David Jenkins, kind media, Ents, Bob Mossy, alien Punk’d, nature as a haunting, and infrastructure. As it’s been a few months since recording, we’d like to report KL! has now seen Our Flag Means Death all the way through roughly 13 times. It was the most watched streaming show for 6 weeks in a row before being unseated and then clawing its way back. Please come yell at KL! about the pirates. It’s literally all they talk about anymore.

Also, KL! has never and will never set Alli on fire.

Today’s Prompt System:

Complete the Story released by Piccadilly USA Inc.

What’s Been Inspiring Us Lately:

• Our Flag Means Death (trailer)
• The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzie Lee

External Links:

• oh this is like GAY gay i thought we were all just fantasising again (tumblr)
• David Jenkins talking about queerbaiting (gif and text spoilers for episode 9 of Our Flag Means Death)
• Everything happens so much. (Horse_ebooks)
• Do Trees Communicate? (Smithsonian Magazine)
• The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater
• Arrival (trailer)
• "Don't Trust Me" by 3OH!3 (video)
• Annihilation (trailer)
• Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer
• You wouldn’t download a plant! (meme)
• Alien (trailer)
• The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

Music: Cherryblossom by Raptorface is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

If you want to help support the podcast and receive additional inspiration, check out our Patreon.

This week, Alli and KL! become tangled in the net of narrative as we fish for a coherent story. We use an old photograph as our jumping off point to discuss creativity, working with your muse, the ethics of Pygmalion, and the horror of a group of mermaid statues sharing a hive mind in your workshop.

Digressions include: asking a mermaid to marry you, every 80s movie, how very wet Florida is, internalized misogyny, and the types of mermaid statues we'd like to see.

Today’s Prompt Systems:

Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past by Ransom Riggs

What’s Been Inspiring Us Lately:

• All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told by Douglas Wolk
• Orphan Black (trailer)

External Links:

• She-Hulk (trailer)
• Pygmailan by George Bernard Shaw
• Splash (trailer)
• Inspector Gadget (video)
• T-1000 (this, but a mermaid!) (video: warning for gun violence and reckless driving)
• Gremlins (trailer)
• Art Nouveau Mermaid (vintage ad)
• Art Deco style mermaid lamp
• Abstract mermaid sculpture
• “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers (video)

Music: Cherryblossom by Raptorface is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

If you want to help support the podcast and receive additional inspiration, check out our Patreon.

Have you ever wondered what it was like to try and recapture a story after it’s become entirely unhinged? Have we got an episode for you! Take a journey with us through the dark underside of the bright lights of Orlando, Florida as we learn about Duckmasters, goth mafias (the gothia), the ways trauma can manifest in your body and your relationships, and the importance of reassembling yourself to be able to accept the love you deserve.

Diversions include the underground blood trade (where anticoagulants are expensive and necessary), Morrissey dance-offs, every movie scene where someone gets buried in cement at a construction site, financial planning for early retirement, and duck voyeurism. KL! also completely blanks on Donald Glover's name, for which they apologize. We’re sorry Mr. Glover! We love your work!

Today’s Prompt System:

The Story Engine Deck by Peter Chiykowski

What’s Been Inspiring Us Lately:
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
• House of X/Powers of X (X-Men) by writer Jonathan Hickman & artists Pepe Larraz, R.B. Silva and Marte Gracia

External Links:

• The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
• Danny the Street (Doom Patrol character) and additional video (warning for language)
• Jay and Miles Explain the X-Men
• The Duckmaster, which is a write up on the current Duckmaster in Memphis, but gives good duck, and a video of the Orlando Peabody march. Hey! I guess the ducks DO get a penthouse!
• Batman: Death by Design by Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor
• I-4 Dead Zone
• I-Drive, for all of your shiny, blinky needs
• Count Duckula
• Bunnicula by James and Deborah Howe

Music: Cherryblossom by Raptorface is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

If you want to help support the podcast and receive additional inspiration, check out our Patreon.