storytelling

I interviewed Beatrice Winifred Iker about their debut novel, I’LL MAKE A SPECTACLE OF YOU and we geeked out about favorite horror writers, dark academia, and perfume.

Links:
Beatrice Winifred Iker’s website: https://www.beatriceiker.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beatricewinifrediker/
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/beatriceiker.bsky.social
Afronauts Podcast: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/afronauts-podcast/
The H Word: Horror Needs Hoodoo: https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-horror-needs-hoodoo/

Books mentioned:
MULES AND MEN – Zora Neale Hurston
PSYCHOPOMP & CIRCUMSTANCE – Eden Royce
AN ARCANE INHERITANCE – Kamilah Cole
WHEN THE RECKONING COMES – LaTanya McQueen

Perfumes mentioned:
Baccarat Rouge 45 – Maison Francis Kurkdijan
Apple Love – Ellis Brooklyn
Eden Juicy Apple – Kayali

I’ve started tabletop playing again, although it’s via Google Hangouts rather than in person. My brother (whose excellent gaming and storytelling blog, Age of Ravens, you should check out) running a Changeling: The Lost campaign and it’s a great way to spend a little time with both him and my sister-in-law, along with meeting some new fellow players. I really love what he’s doing, which is using a system called Microscope in order to collaboratively generate the setting for the game, and it’s making me wonder about the possibilities of it for generating a shared world setting.

We went around the “table” first generating some high level concepts, such as vampires being very rare in this world, the existence of neon elementals, and some rule-specific stuff that kinda flew past my head, but which I’m understanding more as I keep going through the rules. The game’s set in Las Vegas, but successive rounds helped define the specifics of the world and some of the NPCs, like Wayne Newton: Werewolf Hunter or the Count, a bitter, twisted man who runs The Society for the Preservation of Vampires. Lowell’s blogged with more complete details here.

I really love this sort of session, because it’s so much fun to take someone else’s addition and riff on it. After the first round, the person starting each one had to come up with what’s called in Microscope terms a “lens,” something that each addition that round must reference. Ours were: guides, corruption, and alien abduction, and if you look at Lowell’s write-up, you may be able to trace where some of those items came from.