Use Historical Figures for Inspiration
This week's Write the Book prompt is inspired by Nancy Means Wright, who passed away recently. In honor of Wright, draft a story featuring...
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Beginning writers often ask where they can find ideas. Sometimes there's a simple answer, but often a story's gestation is too complex to convey...
How a Polka Helped Win WWII
War or history buffs know the stories of plucky Finland fighting off the much larger Soviet armies on several occasions, but did you know...
We Welcome Our Octopi Overlords
A peer-reviewed research paper published in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, suggests that Earth's original octopi came from outer space.
Researchers posit that...
A Visit to a Dissection Room: 1887
The Victorian Book of the Dead blog shares a transcript of an article that appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on February 13, 1887. In...
All About the Hand of Glory
Of course, horror and fantasy writers who read this blog will know about the Hand of Glory, but we wanted to share this article...
Not for the Faint-Hearted: Poor Man’s Medicine from 18th Century Scotland
Old Weird Scotland shares excerpts from Tippermalloch’s Receipts, or The Poor Man’s Physician, a popular self-help book in early 1700s Scotland. They include cures...
What’s With the Crossing Guard?
The Write the Book podcast offers this prompt: “She’d only been a crossing guard for two days.”
The Woman Who Gave Birth to a Cat
The Murders in History blog shares the story of Agnes Bowker, a 27-year-old woman claimed to have given birth to a cat.
This happened in...
Real-World Final Destination
Like characters in a real-world version of Final Destination, these people miraculously avoided a painful death, but not for long. A post on Mysterious...
