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Hello, all! I retrieve writing prompts from far-off lands where men fear to tread. My work has been featured in diverse locales, such as right here, in the substack you are currently looking at.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 15
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Aug 28, 2026
Latest issues
PROMPT: Write about the most interesting person in your life. (opens the original)
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I won’t use her real name here, even if all I have is praise. She passed away in 2008 and was my piano teacher beforehand, and during that time she was the oldest person I had ever met. I could sense her history, this invisible mass of lived experience, and one day, not wanting to directly ask her age, I asked her when she was born.She thought. I can still see the converted closet she used as a practice room, a space barely wider than the piano itself and thick with the smell of hairspray. “Dece
PROMPT: A plane takes off from LAX with 287 passengers. It will land with 300. (opens the original)
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“I’m telling you, there’s thirteen men on the wing!” Bob Wilson hissed, only to watch as the flight attendant gave that same patronizing smile. “You don’t believe me. Please, Miss, I’m begging you. Take a look.”“No, I believe you!” she replied, in a hush. “It’s just… we don’t want to upset the other passengers. The captain knows about the thirteen men on the wing, and he’s handling them accordingly. But Mr. Wilson, you must keep calm. Perhaps we can close your blind?”Bob Wilson massaged his swea
PROMPT: Reimagine a classic work of literature. (opens the original)
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As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into the largest and therefore strongest man in the world. “Ah HA!” he cried, leaping from his humble four-poster bed and smashing through his humble cottage-style wall.As he fell two stories through driving rain, he pondered the nature of this transformation, this all-consuming call to action–but ponder for long, he did not. There was crime afoot.Sprinting pell-mell through the streets of Praguesylania
PROMPT: Esmerelda always wanted to be a witch. But when she joins an online coven, she realizes there is a terrible price she must pay. (opens the original)
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Esmerelda adjusted her black, horn-rimmed glasses in disbelief. “$29.99 a month?”“That’s right,” Grunhilda replied, her voice crackling and choppy. Zoom was being weird today. “Of course, you can cancel at any time.”Esmerelda shook her head. “I just… the last coven I was rushing only made you take a blood oath.”“Oh, we do that, too. Although with the pandemic, it’s actually an at-home blood-oath kit.”“So I’d have to do an at-home blood oath and </spa
PROMPT: In a pot of boiling water, crabs will pull one another down before they can escape. Write a story inspired by this. (opens the original)
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Crabstopher Crimp had always dreamt of bigger things–and today, finally, was his chance at escape. “Mom, Dad,” he said, sitting across from his two aging parents, “I think I’d like to climb out of the pot.”His mother’s eye-stalks welled up. She raised a claw to her mouth. “Oh, Crabstopher, that’s wonderful!” she cried.Crabstopher, Sr., removed his adorable little corncob pipe from his craw. “My boy!” he cried, with the crab version of an approving smile.You see, the Crimps had always been a supp
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