DreamCasters Agenda,
July 2024

07-07-2024 | 1:00 pm ET via ZOOM

Opening Statement

Welcome to DreamCasters, a DreamForge discussion group devoted to helping our members improve their writing and storytelling through discussion and sharing expertise.

DreamForge News

DreamCaster Dates for 2024

Here are the dates and guests for the next three months.

• July 7, We’re going to do a Writing Exercise on scene writing
• August 11^th (Sunday) – Award Winning SF and Fantasy Poet Mary Soon Lee
• September 8^th, Sunday – Danny Hankner of Story Unlikely

DreamForge Kickstarter

The DreamForge Kickstarter launched on June 20^th! To our Patreon DreamCasters, the most helpful thing you can do is share our posts and help spread the news to anyone who might be interested in supporting positive science fiction and fantasy. Remember, your Patreon DreamCaster membership includes an annual digital subscription. And print subscriptions are available through Patreon too! Your Patreon membership is highly appreciated.Member Accomplishments.

DreamCaster Member Accomplishments

Let us know about any new publications, awards, or accomplishments you might have. If you get news to me at Scot.Noel@DreamForgeMagazine.com, I’ll make sure to mention it.

Candice Lisle – Ahhhh!! My story “The Tell-Tale Cricket” in the Murderbugs Anthology is going to be available on Audible this summer!! I get to hear my story read out loud!! AHHHH!! So excited!!

David Hankins – So thrilled to have THREE new short story releases this month! So many thanks to the editors who brought these stories to life.

• “To Catch A Foo Fighter” – DreamForge Magazine of Science and Fantasy Fiction
• “Gladys Tuttle and the Iguana Incident” – Here There Be Dragons Hiraeth Publishing
• “The Measure of Alex” – Solstitia Magazine

Wulf Moon

Story Unlikely’s results in their 2024 Annual Writing Contest were just announced.  Over 2,500 entries were submitted. This is a blind submission contest. Paid website subscribers get a bonus where they can submit up to three stories in the contest, and I took advantage of that.

Their team voted on contest submissions by merit alone and selected nine finalists. From these nine they chose 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Place. I didn’t win, but for me, my results felt better than a win (not that I wouldn’t have liked the money!). You see, 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭! 𝐈𝐧 𝐚 𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝟐,𝟓𝟎𝟎+ 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬!

The editor told me no one else came close to that accomplishment. And then he sent me a contract and bought my SF story about a young boy abandoned by his mother so she could work on the Moon. “Grasshoppers Against the Jar” will be published in an issue next year.

Also, in Southeastern Writers Association’s 50^th Anniversary Writing Contests, two of my stories won 1^st Place, one in microfiction and the other in their speculative short story competition, each award including nice cash prizes.

The WINK anthology by Brigids Gate Press released–a twist on your favorite childhood classics. It became the #1 New Release and #2 overall on Amazon’s Best Sellers list in short stories in YA Lit!  Includes my story “Precious Treasure,” a wink at The Hobbit and what might have happened on Bilbo’s journey home.  https://amzn.to/45HHByg

Features spellbinding tales by major award-winning authors and 7 NYT bestselling authors, including James Aquilone, Kendare Blake, Stacia Deutsch, Nancy Holder, Alethea Kontis, Jonathan Maberry (a recent Dreamcasters guest!), Seanan McGuire, Maggie Stiefvater, & more!

Let us know about any new publications, awards, or accomplishments you might have. If you get news to me at Scot.Noel@DreamForgeMagazine.com, I’ll make sure to mention it.

The full DreamCaster gallery of published stories is online at Airtable.

Our Program – The Five-Fold Passage

Instead of a guest speaker this month, we’re going to have a writing exercise and just have talking about writing scenes. How do we do it, each of us individually? How do you know when your scene is done, that it has fulfilled its purposes, and that it has a place in moving the story forward?

One method might be what Scot calls The Five-Fold Passage. Nothing about this new or revolutionary in this; it’s basic stuff, but it could be a helpful checklist to make your scene stronger and bring life to your story.

The five elements we’re talking about are:

• Vision
• Extra-Ocular Senses
• Emotion
• Perception
• Plot Step

You can read about it in detail in the June Online Issue of DreamForge Anvil at this link: https://dreamforge.mywebportal.app/dreamforge/stories/show/the-five-fold-passage-scot-noel

Giveaway This Month!

This month one of our attending DreamCasters will win a print copy of DreamForge Magazine 14, our biggest and possibly best issue ever. This is our 5^th Year Celebration Issue, and it boasts a cover illustration by Hugo Award Winning Illustrator Elizabeth Leggett. Fittingly we have stories by DreamCasters David Hankins and Mandy D Chew & Jonathan Chew alongside tales from past masters like Grant Carrington and Robert Silverberg.

In August

In August our Guest will be Mary Soon Lee. Mary was born and raised in London, but has lived in Pittsburgh for thirty years. She writes both fiction and poetry, and is a three-time winner of both the AnLab Readers’ Award and the Rhysling Award. Her latest books are from opposite shores of the poetry ocean: “How to Navigate Our Universe,” containing 128 astronomy poems, and “The Sign of the Dragon,” novel-length epic fantasy, winner of the Elgin Award.

One of our favorite works from Mary is “Elemental Haiku: Poems to honor the periodic table. Several of Mary’s poems have appeared in DreamForge, as well as one short story, “Wrong Turn” in Issue 3.

In addition to meeting Mary and learning about her craft, we’ll talk about the use of language in poetry and prose and how to think like a poet, no matter what you’re writing.

Story Prompts

Science Fiction— Imagine a future in which humans detect aliens in the outer solar system. The aliens are mining, even towing asteroids away, capturing comets, etc. There is no communication with Earth. They don’t seem interested in Earth at all, and they keep a wide berth. Humans soon realize that their future is being stolen. Those are the resources humans will need to expand beyond their home planet?  What do they do?  What do they do when an alien ship does come to Earth – to pay for all that material with more gold than humanity has ever seen?

Fantasy— The magic eater. Imagine a world where a magical creature wanders into a community or village and is kind of charming and soon in the good graces of the local people. They even soon find that it can cure the sick by staying near them, sleeping at the foot of their bed, etc. After a time, it is realized that the creature literally eats magic. It finds magical items and supplies (breaking into the homes of powerful mages as necessary) and sustaining itself on the magical energy of whatever comes to hand. This causes social upheaval, as the resources of the powerful are being used to benefit the powerless. The powers that be soon want the creature dead or imprisoned for their own uses.

Disclaimer: These ideas may or may not be original, convergent ideas are common. DreamForge makes no copyright or monetary claim on these story prompts. Have fun.