DreamCasters Agenda, June 2025
06-08-2025 | 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 2025
Here are the dates and guests for upcoming meetings
- June 8th (Sunday) – Alex Jennings. Alex is the Program Director of DreamFoundry’s Con or Bust and pens a regular speculative poetry review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction called “Chapter and Verse.”
- July 12th (Saturday) – We’re going to play the Story Plotting Game. Help improve the game for a V02 release. We’ll play and comment – what’s hard, what’s easy, what’s fun.
- August 2nd (Saturday) – Stephen Schwartz of Smalltown Tales. Unlock your writing and storytelling potential with Smalltown Tales, the card game that guides you in crafting captivating narratives. Players collaborate to create fascinating characters, captivating plots, and immersive settings using expert writing and storytelling techniques
Member & Author Accomplishments
The full DreamCaster gallery of published stories is online at Airtable.
Our Program – Guest Speaker Alex Jennings
Alex Jennings is a writer/editor/teacher/poet living in Baton Rouge. He was born in Wiesbaden (Germany) and raised in Gaborone (Botswana), Tunis (Tunisia), Paramaribo (Surinam) and the United States. He is the Program Director of DreamFoundry’s Con or Bust and pens a regular speculative poetry review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction called “Chapter and Verse.” In 2022, he was the inaugural recipient of the Imagination Unbound Fellowship at Under the Volcano, a guided writing retreat held annually in Tepoztlan, Mexico. https://www.alexjennings.net
Giveaway This Month!
Hailed as “funny, wild, witty, and profound” by Victor LaValle and “a wild and wonderful debut, teeming with music, family and art” by the New York Times, Alex Jennings’ “The Ballad of Perilous Graves” stands as one of the Best Fantasy Books of 2022.
This wildly imaginative debut transports readers to Nola, an enchanted version of New Orleans where sky trolleys soar overhead, dead cabs prowl the streets, haints dance till dawn, and Wise Women maintain order.
When nine songs of power escape from the piano that keeps the city’s rhythm beating, young mage Perilous Graves must sacrifice everything to save his beloved home from destruction. As Perry races to recover the missing melodies that sustain Nola’s magical existence, he confronts a vengeful wraith, the awakened Haint of All Haints, and a brewing storm that threatens to silence his city’s music forever—creating a fantastical and lyrical love letter to New Orleans that P. Djèlí Clark describes as “magical, lyrical, gritty, otherworldly…hype like Bayou Classic in the 90s.”
In July
July 12th (Saturday) – We’re going to play the Story Plotting Game. Help improve the game for a V02 release. We’ll play and comment – what’s hard, what’s easy, what’s fun
Story Prompts
Science Fiction— “The Last Ambassador”
In 2175, Earth is managed entirely by AI and robots while humans enjoy lives of technological leisure. When crystalline aliens arrive demanding to speak only with an “untainted human ancestor,” the desperate AI council locates Eliza Morgan—a technology-hating recluse living alone in the woods. Reluctantly agreeing to serve as Earth’s ambassador, Eliza navigates tense negotiations with the aliens, who claim to despise artificial intelligence. As talks progress, Eliza makes a startling discovery: the “aliens” themselves are actually AIs who outlived their creators. Now she finds herself in the absurd position of mediating between two groups of artificial intelligences.
Fantasy— “The Matriarch’s Justice.”
When Lerato Khumalo is hired to investigate vanishing poachers in Limpopo National Park, she uncovers something unbelievable: an elephant matriarch with a broken tusk has acquired an ancient magical amulet, using it to make poachers disappear before they can harm her herd. Following the ancient pachyderm, Lerato witnesses the amulet’s power firsthand—only to find herself transported to a hidden valley where the “missing” poachers now care for injured wildlife, unable to escape. To Lerato’s shock, among these reformed poachers is her long-lost father. Now she must choose between exposing the matriarch’s justice or protecting the magical sanctuary that’s healing both human and animal wounds.
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.
