Shining Moon Episode 18: Speculative Poetry III

Hello and welcome to Shining Moon episode Number 18. Today we’ll once again turn our attention to the topic of speculative poetry with guests Rebecca Buchannan, Alicia Hilton, Lorraine Schein. Let’s get started with some introductions.

Rebecca Buchanan is the editor of the Pagan literary ezine, Eternal Haunted Summer. She has released two collections of speculative poetry, as well as several short story collections and novellas. Her work has appeared in a variety of venues, including Abyss & Apex, Corvid Queen, Enchanted Conversation, Eye to the Telescope, Faerie Magazine, Mirror Dance, Star*Line, and others. Her poem “Heliobacterium daphnephilum” was awarded the Rhysling (long form) in 2020, and her collection “Not a Princess, But (Yes) There Was a Pea and Other Faerie Tales to Foment Revolution” tied for third place in the Elgin Awards in 2023.   

Alicia Hilton is an author, editor, arbitrator, professor, and former FBI Special Agent. She believes in angels and demons, magic, and monsters. Her work has appeared in Akashic Books, Creepy Podcast, Daily Science Fiction, Mslexia, Neon, Space & Time, Unnerving, Vastarien, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volumes 4, 5 & 6, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Her website is https://aliciahilton.com. Follow her on Twitter @aliciahilton01 and Bluesky @aliciahilton.bsky.social. 

Lorraine Schein is a New York writer and poet. Her stories and poems have appeared in VICE Terraform, Strange Horizons, Scientific American, NewMyths and Michigan Quarterly, and in the anthologies Wild Women and Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath.

The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry book, is available from Mayapple Press. Her book, The Lady Anarchist Café: Stories & Poems, is out now from Autonomedia. https://autonomedia.org/product/the-lady-anarchist-cafe/

"Don't tell me that the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." -- Anton Chekov

Piano music for closure

Thank you for listening to Shining Moon! You can reach the host, Deborah L. Davitt, at the following social media platforms:

www.facebook.com/deborah.davitt.3

Bluesky: @deborahldavitt.bsky.social

www.deborahldavitt.com

Transcript

Deborah L. Davitt (00:04.15)
Hello and welcome to Shining Moon episode number 18. I'm your host, Deborah L. Davitt. Today we'll return our attention to the topic of speculative poetry with guests Rebecca Buchanan, Alicia Hilton, and Lorraine Shine. Let's get started with some introductions. Rebecca Buchanan is the editor of the pagan literary easing Eternal Haunted Summer, which is a wonderful magazine. She has released two collections of speculative poetry as well as several short story collections and novellas.


Deborah L. Davitt (00:32.898)
Her work has appeared in a variety of venues, including Abyss and Apex, Corvid Queen, Enchanted Conversation, Eye of the Telescope, Fairy Magazine, Mirror Dance, Starline, and others. Her poem Heliobacterium Daffanilium was awarded the Riesling in long form in 2020, and her collection, Not a Princess, but Yes, There Was a Pea, and Other Fairy Stories to Formment Revolution, tied for third place in the Elgin Awards in 2023. Welcome, Rebecca, it's lovely to have you on.

Rebecca (01:02.587)
Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:06.838)
Uh, my pleasure entirely. Alicia Hilton is an author, editor, arbitrator, professor, and former FBI special agent. She believes in angels and demons, magic and monsters. Her work has appeared in acasic books, creepy podcasts, daily science fiction, mslexia, neon space and time, unnerving, the starian, year's best hardcore horror volumes 4, 5, and 6, and elsewhere.

She is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Her website is alishahilton.com. Follow her on Twitter at alishahilton01 and bluesky at alishahilton.bsky.social. Welcome back, Alicia. It's lovely to hear from you again.

Alicia Hilton (01:51.489)
Thank you. It's great to be here. Excited to talk about poetry.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:57.098)
Awesome. Lorraine Shine is a New York writer and poet. Her stories and poems have appeared in Vice, Terraform, Strange Horizons, Scientific American, New Mist, and Michigan Quarterly, and in the anthologies, Wild Women and Tragedy Queens, stories inspired by Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath. The Futurist Mistress, her poetry book, is available from May Apple Press. Her book, The Lady Anarchist Cafe, Stories and Poems, is out now from Autonomedia.

Rebecca (02:15.363)
Thank you.

Lorraine Schein (02:23.46)
Autonomedia.

Deborah L. Davitt (02:25.062)
Autonomedia. Okay, I almost got it right and then I stopped in the middle because I was afraid I was wrong.

Lorraine Schein (02:27.891)
I know. It was fun.


Deborah L. Davitt (02:33.655)
Hello Lorraine, I hope you're doing well today.

Lorraine Schein (02:35.847)
Thank you. Well, I'm getting over an operation, but I'm better now. So.

Deborah L. Davitt (02:44.546)
Yeah, we missed you last time because of that. I'm sorry to have missed you the last time and I hope that you're doing lots better now.

Lorraine Schein (02:51.679)
Thank you. Well, I'm glad there was another opportunity to do this.

Deborah L. Davitt (02:56.798)
Yeah. All right, so we're going to jump into the questions. Everybody has their own definition of what speculative poetry is. When I first got started, there was a lot of conversation about, is science poetry speculative enough to count as being speculative poetry? And there was a lot of almost purity testing going on in 2015 when I first got started on this. And it was a little intimidating at the time, quite frankly.

How do you define speculative poetry? And we're gonna start with Alicia Buchanan because she's an editor and she's first on the alphabetical list and she can tell me exactly what she defines as being speculative poetry.

Rebecca (03:35.603)
Oh, I would say speculative poetry is anything that deals with things that cannot be seen with the naked eye or heard or smelled with the five senses. Anything that deals with things outside of our normal experiences.

Deborah L. Davitt (03:51.174)
Okay, Alicia, would you agree with that or do you think that it can go further?

Alicia Hilton (03:56.265)
I think it could go even further. I think of it as science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism, fabulous. And things I do agree, it's things you can't necessarily see, but sometimes maybe you can see them and somebody else can't see them or you smell them. You know, it's the merging of reality and other plateaus, other realms, liminal spaces, you know.

Deborah L. Davitt (04:24.651)
Yeah.

Alicia Hilton (04:25.269)
I think of it as pretty broad.

Deborah L. Davitt (04:27.99)
Lorraine?

Lorraine Schein (04:28.983)
I don't really feel that... I think all poetry is speculative poetry. There has been fantasy poetry and science fiction poetry long before this term. I think what's different is the concentration of people on this as a separate theme.

Deborah L. Davitt (04:42.6)
Mm-hmm.

Lorraine Schein (04:55.883)
And sometimes there are also stylistic differences. Like sometimes in the so-called literary magazines, there will be a poem that is somewhat fantasy oriented or science fiction oriented. And it's just a matter, it's maybe not concentrating on a style as deeply. So...

Deborah L. Davitt (04:56.019)
Mm-hmm.


Lorraine Schein (05:23.043)
I think what's different is that there are a group of poets who are concentrating on writing solely this kind of poetry, maybe in a certain way. So to contest Rebecca's definition, I think all poetry is potentially about things that are unseen or hard to describe. So I don't think that's really...


Lorraine Schein (05:53.435)
you know, the most fitting definitions.

Deborah L. Davitt (05:57.826)
That's fair. Why do you personally write poetry? I'm going to start back with Rebecca again.

Rebecca (06:06.625)
Wow, this is a actually a big question for me. I suppose I write poetry because I didn't read poetry when I was a kid in school.

Deborah L. Davitt (06:14.131)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca (06:14.683)
supposed to prose a lot. We read a lot of short stories and novel excerpts and things like that, and I didn't really discover poetry until I was much older, like grad school or later. And now it's this thing that I need to understand. So I use it as a means of understanding the form itself and beyond that using the form to understand other things, exploring things that I can't with my prose.

Deborah L. Davitt (06:42.03)
Okay, that's a perfectly valid explanation. I read a lot of poetry coming up in my undergrad and my graduate career, but that's because I was focusing on medieval and renaissance and that's what they were writing at that point in time. And though they did have some prose, I'm not going to discount the prose, it's just that it's much more difficult to get through than their poetry was.

Yeah, but being able to grapple with and explore different things that you haven't been able to work with before is it's amazing. Alicia, why do you write poetry? I mean, you you've got this hard crunchy background. You're a professor, you're a former FBI specialist. What motivates you to write poetry?

Alicia Hilton (07:29.837)
Well, actually, the very first poem that I wrote that was published was when I was 12, and my English teacher made everyone in the class write a poem and enter a contest. And it was for high school students, but I was 12 and I actually won the contest. It was for Museum of Science and Industry, OMSI, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They had a poetry contest where you had to write about an animal, and I wrote a poem about a lion, and...

Deborah L. Davitt (07:41.599)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (07:47.605)
Oh nice.

Alicia Hilton (08:00.165)
I think poetry is something that's just like in my bones, in my blood, it's just there. It's the way my mind works. Even when I write prose, some of my stories start out as poems. And then when I write prose, it's not as if I try to rhyme, but sometimes there's rhyming in it. I use alliteration. I write very vivid work.

Deborah L. Davitt (08:07.297)
Mm-hmm.

Alicia Hilton (08:25.377)
not just from a visual standpoint, but all the senses, you know, as smell, touch, you know, everything. And so to me, like vivid imagery is something that's just fascinates me. And I like to observe the world and then write about it. And a lot of times that comes out in poetry, whether it's nature or something that's in my mind that may not exist or may exist. So it's kind of a compulsion almost.

Rebecca (08:33.791)
Thanks for watching!

Deborah L. Davitt (08:40.871)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (08:53.046)
Yeah, I've definitely experienced that before where I've started with a poem and I've gone, this isn't done yet, this needs to be a story. Or sometimes I write a story and I'm just like, I still had something more to say and I wanted to encapsulate it in a different way from a different point of view and so therefore a poem comes out of it too. So sometimes you can go backwards with it, sometimes you can go forwards with it, and sometimes it's just a different way of grappling with the same theme, the same idea, that sort of thing.

Rebecca (09:17.071)
Thanks for watching.

Deborah L. Davitt (09:22.934)
Lorraine, why do you write poetry?

Lorraine Schein (09:25.407)
Well, similar to Alicia, I started writing poetry when I was 10 or 12. It just came naturally to me. And I think I also had my first poem published in the school paper or whatever when I was 10 or 12. And it's always been easier for me to write poetry than prose, actually. I guess.


Lorraine Schein (09:56.383)
So sometimes my poems don't usually turn into stories, but my stories also have strong imagery and sometimes rhythm like Alicia says. So it's something that came naturally to me also.

Deborah L. Davitt (10:04.395)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (10:07.531)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (10:13.666)
Well, they often tell you that you should read what you write. So, and I know that Rebecca obviously reads tons and tons and tons of poetry that comes in through the slush pile. But when you're not reading poetry for the magazine, what other venues might you particularly recommend as places that you go to read for enjoyment?

Rebecca (10:24.463)
Yeah. Hmm. I tend to read a lot of printed collections of poetry, uh, at work, translations of new stuff like Emily Wilson's New Iliad and Her Odyssey. I read those.

Deborah L. Davitt (10:44.002)
Okay.

Deborah L. Davitt (10:49.321)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca (10:49.979)
Adam Bolivar's Wheel of Ravens, the new translation of Enheduanna's poetry. I like having the physical books in my hands. I don't mind probably as much as I should because I just like holding the book and being like absorbed in the printed poem.

Deborah L. Davitt (10:57.902)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (11:05.77)
Hey, that's fair. I wish I was as able to read printed works as I used to be. I used to be voracious for printed books and these days I am much more oriented towards reading online, so I envy you. Alicia, what do you read when you are looking for poetry for enjoyment's sake? Where do you read?

Alicia Hilton (11:28.065)
For enjoyment's sake. Well, I like to read collections too, and I love anthologies Sometimes the anthologies I read are a mix of fiction and poetry and then terms of magazines Strange horizons dreams and nightmares not one of us eternal high in December, of course, but I was published recently there, you know So many magazines that also like neon which was published in the UK

Rebecca (11:49.279)
Thank you.

Alicia Hilton (11:56.829)
I love neon, they recently went on hiatus, but I've had four poems published there. Three Penny Review, Paris Review, you know, I like to mix it up, and a lot of the other journals like Pen Review, just, so I go for the literary journals, and I go for the publications that specialize in speculative as well.

Deborah L. Davitt (12:02.983)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca (12:13.249)
Thank you.

Rebecca (12:20.021)
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (12:20.598)
Yeah, I miss Foundry. Foundry was a particularly good one that did the occasional speculative poem, but they were also just basically a literary genre magazine. And I just loved what they put out and I miss them. Lorraine, when you read for fun, for enjoyment's sake, in terms of poetry, as opposed to researching a journal to decide what you can send them, where do you like to read?

Lorraine Schein (12:50.131)
I'm similar to Rebecca. I also like physical books and sometimes I get collections or anthologies. Of course I read all the speculative online journals like Eternal Summer and Strange Horizons. But also I read some of the online literary journals such as Rattle. Rattle is a good one. They occasionally publish...

Deborah L. Davitt (13:13.026)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Lorraine Schein (13:17.479)
poems that are kind of speculative. And some of the Canadian literary magazines I find are very open to more experimental or speculative work. I had some work in a journal called Valum, V-A-L-L-U-M, which is a very good Canadian journal.

Deborah L. Davitt (13:27.95)
Mm-hmm.

Lorraine Schein (13:45.864)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (13:47.17)
We're going to turn this over to the poets and let you guys show off what you can do when you do not have a time limit on. And we're going to start with Rebecca, because I'm just I just go in alphabetical order each time because that keeps things fair. Rebecca, would you mind reading something that you have published that is about two to three minutes in length?


Rebecca (14:11.307)
Well, the one I picked is actually shorter. It is the first poem in my new collection, Not a Princess, but Yes, There Was a Pea, and I think it encapsulates the kind of stuff I like to write pretty well. It's called Beware the Goose Mother. She sits atop chimneys, skulks in closets, and crawls under beds, wrapped in her cloak of white feathers. She whispers tales of angry daughters and mad wives, of stolen children and disrupted lives.

of teeth broken and dull, filed sharp anew. Her tale told, a mind awakened, a heart cracked in two. She draws her cloak around her shoulders, sprouts swift wings and barbed beak, and takes flight, transformed as the world will be, tale by tale.

Deborah L. Davitt (14:59.022)
Ooh, love how that ended. That landed hard.

Rebecca (15:06.071)
So yeah, I liked that one. It was a good introduction to the collection.

Deborah L. Davitt (15:09.598)
Yeah, the first poem in a collection should encapsulate everything that the reader is going to expect going forward, and that really lands hard and it does what it needs to do. It introduces the entirety of the collection going forward. So, Alicia, what have you got for us to listen to?

Alicia Hilton (15:30.513)
I'm going to read a science fiction poem that was published in Dreams and Nightmares. It's called New Beginnings. Fresh, she watched a centipede squirm in the rooster's beak. Bloated, wishing she'd never bought breast implants. Curdled, finding the breast pump after her diagnosis.

Alicia Hilton (15:59.885)
The robot carved tumors from her chest. Malignant, the postman brought another hospital bill. Bartered, she traded her body for immortality. Putty, the artist molded her face. Ether, the scientist uploaded her consciousness. Reboot.

The androids have her smile.

Rebecca (16:33.706)
Very nice.

Deborah L. Davitt (16:35.874)
I like that one. That one has a lovely dark arc to it. I can see why David picked that one up really, really fast. Lorraine, you have a couple of short poems that you wanna read to us.

Alicia Hilton (16:37.289)
Thank you.

Lorraine Schein (16:50.771)
Well, I don't know how long I should go, but I'll just start with one. And then if there's time, I guess people will read. This was in Worlds of Possibility edited by Julia Rios. It's based on a factual article I read about Jocelyn Bell.

Deborah L. Davitt (17:06.592)
Ooh.

Lorraine Schein (17:16.371)
Jocelyn Bell and the LGM with periods. Astrophysics student Jocelyn Bell, analyzing the chart of a radio telescope, noticed the recurring marks on its printout. Not knowing what they meant, she and her advisor joked that they must be signals from an alien planet and so dubbed them little green men.

or LGM. Now we know that she had discovered pulsars, short for pulsating neutron stars. But what if pulsars really are sending signals from the LGM? A persistent beacon emitted from an interstellar lighthouse radiating through the vast space-time sea, warning of


Lorraine Schein (18:15.635)
to help us safely steer our ships to where they are.

Deborah L. Davitt (18:22.766)
Okay, nice.

Rebecca (18:24.011)
I like it.

Deborah L. Davitt (18:27.609)
Ah!

While we would normally, we're going to go ahead and move on to the actual writing of poetry, which is the poetry thunderdome, which is what most people seem to tune in for. And it's a lot of fun. Any of you played one before?

Rebecca (18:48.315)
No. Nope.

Alicia Hilton (18:49.109)
No.

Deborah L. Davitt (18:50.226)
Okay, so simply put, the rules are that we're going to have three words, either a noun, a verb, and an adjective, or a person, a place, and a thing, depending on which round we're on. And those are going to be your seeds to write a poem in two minutes. And I will cut out the time so that people at home don't have to listen to us sitting here sweating and straining and trying to write.

Um, in silence, of course, total utter silence.

Rebecca (19:25.166)
No muttering.

Deborah L. Davitt (19:26.97)
No muttering, very little muttering. Hehehehe

Alicia Hilton (19:28.577)
No swearing.

Deborah L. Davitt (19:33.972)
Well, if you feel impelled, just know that it will not be in the final recording, so you are safe.

Rebecca (19:40.587)
Oh, I don't know. I think that could be fun. That might be entertaining for your listeners hearing us swear.

Alicia Hilton (19:45.633)
Ha ha ha!

Deborah L. Davitt (19:49.53)
All right, so I'm going to ask first Lorraine, pick a number between 1 and 30.

Lorraine Schein (19:55.743)
Seven.

Deborah L. Davitt (19:58.082)
Seven, the noun is quantity.

Deborah L. Davitt (20:03.466)
Alicia, pick a number between 1 and 30.

Alicia Hilton (20:07.341)
three.

Deborah L. Davitt (20:09.962)
Plead is the verb.

Lorraine Schein (20:13.015)
P-L-E-I-D.

Deborah L. Davitt (20:13.838)
Plead. Like I plead the fifth. And Rebecca, could you pick a number between one and 30?

Lorraine Schein (20:17.224)
Alright.

Rebecca (20:21.427)
29.

Deborah L. Davitt (20:23.914)
Minor is our adjective. So the words are quantity, plead, and minor.

Deborah L. Davitt (20:35.338)
And we will begin now.

Deborah L. Davitt (22:39.757)
All right.

That is two minutes. Who wants to go first?

Rebecca (22:49.044)
You're going alphabetical, so I can if you want me to.

Deborah L. Davitt (22:52.926)
If you want me to go first and start throwing myself on my sword, I can do that too.

Rebecca (22:56.819)
Go throw away.

Deborah L. Davitt (22:59.046)
Alright, a vast quantity of stars do not plead no matter how vast or how minor they are in the grand scale of the universe. They know that they must die either by exploding into vast nebulas or contracting down into white dwarfs, but they do not plead against their fate, knowing somehow their place in space-time better than we humans do.

Rebecca (23:19.175)
Oooooooooh, I like it!

Deborah L. Davitt (23:22.803)
All right, Rebecca, you want to go next?

Rebecca (23:25.631)
Okay, I kind of cheated a little bit. I changed one of the words. So let me know if I'm not allowed to do that. Okay.

Deborah L. Davitt (23:31.134)
You're totally allowed to do that. These are seeds.

Rebecca (23:34.799)
Okay, here we go. A quantity of prayers, uncounted, pleases and pleadings and panderings. Give me this, give me that, do this, do that. You are great, I am not. But is the most minor that is heard and answered. A dandelion in full bloom, gift for a bare grave.

Lorraine Schein (23:54.428)
Oh, I like that ending.

Deborah L. Davitt (23:56.188)
I love that.

That came out really well. And so it's done in two minutes, ladies and gentlemen. Alicia, how do you feel about yours? You're looking a little uncomfortable.

Alicia Hilton (24:09.774)
Oh, it's I feel like it's the beginning of something but it's I'm not satisfied. I feel like it could even be a story lost all this Yeah, I'll give it a go Never enough. Yes never enough milligrams She held out her hand for the secret cash notepads in the desk Scripts she'd love to forge

Deborah L. Davitt (24:18.53)
Hey, that means that you've got something else to work on when we're done with this. This is great. All right, tell us what it is.

Alicia Hilton (24:36.569)
pleading, cajoling, slipping more flattery and cash across the doctor's table, a smile which he returned with a frown. Your ailments are minor, aching joints, ordinary decrepitude of aging.

Deborah L. Davitt (24:53.706)
Yeah, that is the start of something else and I wanna read the rest of it.

Rebecca (24:58.565)
Definitely finished.

Deborah L. Davitt (24:58.966)
Lorraine.

Lorraine Schein (25:04.879)
This turned out a little like Deborah's. The minor outer exoplanets plead to Earth for their quantity of life, for green photosynthesis, air, blue skies, life beings. That's it.

Deborah L. Davitt (25:26.262)
perfect that worked really well all right we're gonna go ahead and move to person place and thing for the next one I'm gonna start at the bottom of the list and I start the bottom of the list last time with Lorraine did I ask you to go first and pick a number between 1 and 30

Rebecca (25:39.327)
Mm hmm.

Lorraine Schein (25:43.079)
You've been doing it alphabetical now.

Deborah L. Davitt (25:46.566)
Okay, well we'll start we'll start in reverse order this time with Lorraine. You pick a number between 1 and 30.

Lorraine Schein (25:53.264)
Um, 30?

Deborah L. Davitt (25:56.514)
30 is a soldier.

A place will be next Alicia. You can pick one between 30.

Alicia Hilton (26:05.753)
24.

Deborah L. Davitt (26:07.662)
24 is Yellowstone National Park.

Lorraine Schein (26:12.223)
Hehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (26:16.982)
and Rebecca, one in 30.

Rebecca (26:19.134)
Two.

Deborah L. Davitt (26:22.038)
Your thing is a pterodactyl.

Lorraine Schein (26:24.041)
Yeah

Deborah L. Davitt (26:26.37)
So we have a Soldier, Yellowstone National Park, and a pterodactyl. And because those are so, so very disparate things, I'm going to give you a moment to think about that because I need a moment too. And go.

. . . . 

Deborah L. Davitt (28:19.822)
That's terrible.

Rebecca (28:25.229)
I can't remember how to spell some of these words.

Deborah L. Davitt (28:29.394)
It's okay, just use abbreviations and we'll know what it is when you get there.

......

Deborah L. Davitt (28:44.294)
All right, that is two minutes.

And since we started with Rebecca, I started last time, then Rebecca went, we went in alphabetical order. We're gonna start with Lorraine at the beginning this time. Lorraine.

Lorraine Schein (28:57.791)
The time traveling soldier found himself back in Yellowstone National Park before it was a park. It was now a giant swamp with dinosaurs and volcanoes. A pterodactyl flew over his head as he wondered how he would return.

Deborah L. Davitt (29:18.182)
Okay, sounds like the start of something a little bit longer than you normally would write, but I think that is promising. Alicia, what did you get to?

Rebecca (29:19.427)
Mm hmm.

Lorraine Schein (29:27.999)
Thank you.

Rebecca (29:29.724)
Just don't step in the middle of one.

Alicia Hilton (29:32.101)
I was playing with a lot of imagery and I'm not sure what this is going to become but um, down softer than dreams, her feathers armored in sunbeams, she led the patrol, wren soldiers, bold, young and old, patrolling Yellowstone National Park, wings flapping, trapping pterodactyl dreams.

Deborah L. Davitt (29:44.733)
Ooh.

Deborah L. Davitt (29:58.67)
fun! And it's actually complete too, that's not bad! Rebecca!

Alicia Hilton (30:02.275)
Yep.

Rebecca (30:07.095)
Okay, this is what I ended up with. A soldier on leave early morning, the geyser like clockwork, but not today. Today there is a rumble, a roar, a shake, as yellow stones and black stones and red crack and heave the old world erupting into the new tyrannosaurus and triceratops and pyridactylus wings wide to hide the sun.

Deborah L. Davitt (30:31.198)
Nice! I wound up with the pterodactyl soared over Yellowstone National Park, the chip in its brain controlled by the soldier below. Ancient hunter, modern one, a team bound by technology, and perhaps a little love. Great wings beat wilder than any condor, camera eyes gleam, they ride the air together, hearts beating as one.

Lorraine Schein (30:54.899)
Hmm.

Rebecca (30:56.238)
and.

Deborah L. Davitt (30:58.122)
I think that needs work. That one needs work.

Rebecca (31:02.391)
I do like the pairing of the ancient and modern technology. That is very cool.

Deborah L. Davitt (31:09.322)
I tend to like to do that so that feels like cheating. So since it's a theme, I come back to a lot, the pairing of history and the future. But yeah, I like it, but it needs work. All right, let's move on to round three. We're gonna move back to Rebecca starting us off with a number between one and 30.

Rebecca (31:32.918)
11.

Deborah L. Davitt (31:35.582)
11 is application.

Deborah L. Davitt (31:40.301)
and Alicia.

Alicia Hilton (31:42.526)
19.

Deborah L. Davitt (31:45.23)
Treasure and Lorraine.

Lorraine Schein (31:50.463)
Four.

Deborah L. Davitt (31:52.598)
itchy. So your words are application, treasure, and itchy.


Lorraine Schein (31:58.286)
Yeah. Okay.


Deborah L. Davitt (32:04.649)
And begin.

Lorraine Schein (32:07.776)
Okay.

Deborah L. Davitt (32:09.339)
Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (34:07.142)
And that is two minutes.

Deborah L. Davitt (34:12.876)
Oh, we're gonna start with Alicia this time because I wanna pick on each person in turn.

Rebecca (34:17.572)
Oh,

Alicia Hilton (34:20.158)
Okay.

Human resources. Hunting for intellectual elites, minds elastic, capable of amazing feats. Elusive treasure amongst the quagmire of lies. Each candidate that puffed their credentials made her itch break out in hives.

Deborah L. Davitt (34:26.158)
Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (34:44.342)
Ooh, fun!

Rebecca (34:49.255)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (34:49.83)
All right, I assume that at some point or another that we will find the perfect candidate and that will be the treasure that makes her freeze in place. But...

Alicia Hilton (34:58.995)
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (35:01.59)
But I like that, I like how it ends, I like the humor of it, I like how it works. Lorraine.

Lorraine Schein (35:11.359)
The pirate opened the treasure box and began to grasp the jewels and gold he found within. Then he noticed his hands had a rash and felt itchy. He asked his first mate for an application of whale blubber to soothe his obvious metal allergy.

Deborah L. Davitt (35:25.422)
Hehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (35:31.168)
Ha ha!

Deborah L. Davitt (35:40.278)
Well, with the words we had, you couldn't do much better than that. Rebecca.

Lorraine Schein (35:46.76)
I had read an article on the web today about metal allergies. So.

Deborah L. Davitt (35:51.766)
Wow.

Rebecca (35:54.295)
I like it. It's very funny. It's got a nice twist on the end.

Lorraine Schein (35:57.611)
Oh, thank-

Deborah L. Davitt (35:58.026)
It does.

Rebecca (36:01.499)
Ooh, me? My turn? Okay. Okay, here we go. The diving suit is itchy, too tight, too hot, but this deep, all that keeps away the cold and darkness and crushing death. A dark web purchase. Her friends warned her it was a con, but she believed. The app blinking, pointing the way to the treasure long sought.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:02.93)
Yes, you. It is your turn.

Rebecca (36:27.431)
Great-grandfather's plane lost on that December morning so long ago.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:33.034)
Ooh, yeah, I like that. That's got a lot of things going on in it at once. And I love the character that you've created in such a short space.

Rebecca (36:48.243)
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:48.638)
Umm... I've got one that I'm not sure I like, but we'll read it anyway. The application ground to a halt, freezing the computers that directed ground-penetrating radar in search of treasure. An itchy spot formed between her shoulder blades, someone was watching her in this hidden place so far off the grid that she might as well have been on Saturn. But who and why? She might never know. She rebooted the computer and attempted once more to look into the past for signs of a future she might never know. Yay!

Rebecca (37:17.993)
That sounds like the start to a gothic romance treasure hunt adventure.

Lorraine Schein (37:21.488)
Yeah, that sounds like.

Deborah L. Davitt (37:22.374)
It does, yeah. It sounds like the start of something much bigger and I don't think I have time to write that bigger thing right now.

Deborah L. Davitt (37:31.93)
All right, one more round at two minutes and then we'll move to our luxurious five minute round.

Let's see, who hasn't gone first in terms of this? Lorraine, would you like to pick a number between one and 30?

Lorraine Schein (37:47.184)
Well, I have, but I'll pick another 15.

Deborah L. Davitt (37:51.03)
15. All right, that's a soothsayer.

Lorraine Schein (37:54.467)
Oh, that's a better one. No more. It's good.

Deborah L. Davitt (37:56.348)
Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (37:59.81)
How about Alicia?

Alicia Hilton (38:02.599)
Um, five.

Deborah L. Davitt (38:05.806)
Five is Io, the moon Io.

Rebecca (38:11.382)
Oh.

Deborah L. Davitt (38:14.018)
Soothsayer IO and what's our last word there Rebecca?

Rebecca (38:18.936)
Um... 19.

Deborah L. Davitt (38:22.558)
19 is a cargo container. So a soothsayer, IO, and a cargo container. And your time begins now.

Deborah L. Davitt (40:36.214)
All right, that is two minutes.

Deborah L. Davitt (40:42.606)
Who would like to go first this time? Since I picked on everybody in turn so far.

Deborah L. Davitt (40:51.979)
I can't go.

Rebecca (40:51.979)
I guess I can if you need me to.

Deborah L. Davitt (40:56.91)
I can throw myself on my sword again, that's fine, and then we'll go to Rebecca after me. I started with, the Soothsayer's Palace was really a converted cargo container like most other buildings on Io, sulfur coated in yellow it loomed over her as she poured over tarot cards and crystals, looking for a future in a place where there was none, only movement ahead of the eruptions and tectonic and radiation storms. What did she see in her cards? Death in the hanged men.

Reversals and misfortune, that's all she knew and all she cared to know.

Lorraine Schein (41:27.463)
Oh, that's really a start something, I think. Yeah.

Rebecca (41:29.442)
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (41:32.514)
Start of something bigger. I will have to play with this one a little bit more. Rebecca?

Rebecca (41:37.795)
Okay, mine is definitely unfinished. Okay. To Io they flew driven by visions of ancient soothsayers carved into cavern walls lost and then found again. To Io they flew ship with tail of light and flame packed with cargo trade or offerings as the case may be to ancient gods lost then found again.

Deborah L. Davitt (42:00.586)
Yeah, that's gonna be something fun when you play with that a little bit more. That's all- it's already fun, but you're gonna have some fun working that one out.

Alisha!

Alicia Hilton (42:14.337)
Okay. Stow away in a cargo container. The beast she trapped squirmed and thrashed. Not even a soothsayer could guess her motive for trapping her nemesis. Regarding her broken nails, the faint coppery scent. She wondered whether she would finally end the vendetta on Io,

an earthly dominion, finding love.

Deborah L. Davitt (42:48.142)
Hmm. Yeah, that needs a little bit, that demands more, I think.

Alicia Hilton (42:49.324)
Hahaha!

Rebecca (42:50.114)
Thanks.

Alicia Hilton (42:55.006)
It demands more. It's definitely weird.

Deborah L. Davitt (42:58.25)
Yeah, that one sounds like the beginning of a short story that I would like to read.

Alicia Hilton (43:01.962)
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (43:04.362)
Lorraine?

Lorraine Schein (43:08.464)
The psychic soothsayer who lived in the hidden sea of the moon Io was secretly stowed away on the starship for passage to earth where his services were paid for by the highest bidders.

Rebecca (43:10.671)
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (43:29.814)
Hmm. Okay.

Rebecca (43:31.386)
Sounds like...

Deborah L. Davitt (43:35.358)
Yeah, that one, it's the beginning of something and I think that it would, it's going to bloom when you have a chance to play with it a little bit more. All right, we're gonna go to our five minute round. So I have to adjust my phone here. Five minutes round and let's see. Do you guys wanna do noun, verb, adjective, or person, place, and thing this time?

Rebecca (44:03.296)
No preference.

Alicia Hilton (44:05.101)
I don't either.

Deborah L. Davitt (44:05.982)
Okay, then we're going to go back to noun-verb-adjective, and I'm going to say, Alicia, pick me a number between one and 30 for the noun.

Alicia Hilton (44:14.445)
22.

Deborah L. Davitt (44:16.462)
22 is obligation.

Deborah L. Davitt (44:22.454)
Lorraine, pick me something for the verb, one in 30.

Lorraine Schein (44:26.559)
14

Deborah L. Davitt (44:29.058)
Fix. Obligation fix and Rebecca.

Rebecca (44:36.029)
Uh, 12.

Deborah L. Davitt (44:39.286)
Relieved. Obligation fix relieved starting now.

Rebecca (44:51.231)
Thanks for watching!

Rebecca (49:09.756)
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (49:46.811)
All right, that was five minutes.

Rebecca (49:49.348)
Really? Thanks.

Deborah L. Davitt (49:51.313)
Really?

Deborah L. Davitt (49:58.014)
Alicia, you wanna lead us off?

Alicia Hilton (50:00.998)
Sure. Etched on her palms, calluses and cuts, stung less than the obligation. D is for defeat, R is for rage, A is for anger, G is for gone, O is for only, N is for not nearly enough. Why did the leashed beast, wriggling scales, that would pay?

Rebecca (50:22.762)
Thank you.

Alicia Hilton (50:29.869)
For her freedom, gnashing teeth, not bring her relief. Relieved, the finished quest brought no respite. She handed the woven golden braid to the king. Felt more kinship with the muzzled fire breather than her sire that wore the crown.

Rebecca (50:49.617)
I'm sorry.

Deborah L. Davitt (50:50.194)
Ooh, ooh. Very nice.

I'll go next if nobody else wants to go. I actually put a title on this one. This one's The Chosen One's Mother. The obligation was clear. She had to take care of the foretold child, the boy who would become king, the chosen one. And yet, what a relief it would be when he was grown. Not just because he was supposed to fix all that was wrong with the world, but because then she'd have time to herself once more. She knew such thoughts were probably callous and wrong, but motherhood had never sat well on her. No one had

Rebecca (51:08.368)
Thanks for watching!

Deborah L. Davitt (51:25.05)
asked her if she wanted to be a mother, a teacher, or role model. They simply pressed the child into her arms and bid her hide him in the countryside, hiding his starry birth mark from all who passed. Of course she had to. The gods themselves had demanded that someone raise this child, but by those self-same gods, why did it have to be her? Gods and men had demanded this of her, so she did her part, teaching and rearing and raising, until the day that the chosen one was old enough to leave her care. And only when he left did she weep.

not just in relief at the end of her long resentment, but in bewildered pain, because she'd never really realized that she loved the child, too.

Rebecca (52:02.961)
Very nice.

Deborah L. Davitt (52:05.55)
I was surprised I had enough time to get all those thoughts out. So yeah, yay for five minutes. Rebecca.

Rebecca (52:13.716)
Uh, okay, I should let you know there's a time period in this one that I don't think is right because I haven't had the chance to look it up, so if that's wrong just ignore it. Okay. Relieved of her obligations, should she be thankful? Angry? Should she weep? Should she run? A soothsayer's turn of Cirrus was a single revolution of aisle round Jupiter and Jupiter round the sun, a decade by the counting of days on Earth. But it was over now.

where her place, her position, her course had been fixed. Sit here, read the ice and waters, say what you see, set others on their course. I was spinning, Jupiter spinning, the sun spinning, circle within circles. Now she was unmoored, unfixed, free, and the ice and waters were dark and still.

Deborah L. Davitt (53:01.902)
Ooh, fun. You can bind a whole bunch of prompts there and it came out really fun. I love this.

Deborah L. Davitt (53:11.382)
Lorraine, what did you manage to do in five minutes?

Lorraine Schein (53:16.343)
Once she discovered she was dead, she was relieved of the obligations of those who were alive. She didn't have to wear a mask anymore. There was nothing that could fix this, she knew. She didn't have to worry about anything. There were no deadlines for the dead. All she had to do is stay in her grave and maybe become a ghost.

if she wanted to. But that was optional. Not all corpses did that. She could haunt the people who loved her or those who hated her. That's it.

Rebecca (53:47.265)
Thank you.

Rebecca (54:02.039)
I like it.

Deborah L. Davitt (54:02.398)
I like that. I liked the line that no deadlines for the dead that had punch.

Lorraine Schein (54:09.161)
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (54:11.886)
Alright, so we're going to go ahead and turn away to asking you guys about what you've done recently or anything that might be coming out in the near future that you might like to direct people's eyeballs to. I know that Rebecca has her collection that we mentioned in the intro about the princess and the pea, which got a nod during the Rieslings.

Rebecca (54:34.267)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (54:39.358)
So would you have that in something else or just that?

Rebecca (54:44.165)
I just released an ebook novella. It's a funny urban fantasy called Geek Witch and the Treacherous Tome of Deadly Danger, which is out there now. And I was invited to participate in a shared cozy fantasy universe. And I decided to make my main character a bard toad, which is a toad that sees what they do and then writes songs to read in, you know, toppers

Alicia Hilton (55:00.749)
you may find me a character in a art book, which is a code and then sees what they do and then writes songs to read it.

Rebecca (55:11.87)
So I figure I'll write the short stories and then when I put all the short stories together in a collection I'll actually write the poems that he used as his songs.

Alicia Hilton (55:20.033)
Very cool.

Deborah L. Davitt (55:20.317)
That's lovely! That's gonna be so much fun!

Cozy is having a moment and I love that. Alicia, what do you have coming out soon or recently that you'd like to promote or talk about?

Alicia Hilton (55:33.353)
Well, I have a lot of work that's coming out, but two things that are going to be out this month, I know, is my story, Devouring Sin, Serenity Pines Cemetery, is gonna be out in Space and Time Magazine. And I know it's one of the big stories, because they asked me about the art, so I'm excited about that. And then I have a poem, which is called Baby Wanted to Come Back.

Rebecca (55:54.42)
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (55:54.846)
Oh nice.

Alicia Hilton (56:02.109)
in the Horror Writers Association Poetry Showcase that's, I think, going to be out this month as well, and then some other work. And I recently finished writing my first poetry collection, which I've sent out on submission to a few places, and I'll be sending out to some more places. So.

Deborah L. Davitt (56:06.818)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca (56:18.706)
Thanks.

Deborah L. Davitt (56:19.018)
Yeah, the never-ending cycle of, please read my work, please read my work, that we all go through. Lorraine, what do you have coming out soon or recently that you'd like to promote or talk about?

Alicia Hilton (56:25.097)
Yes.

Lorraine Schein (56:34.499)
Well, I have a prose poem called Star-Foam coming out in Utopia Science Fiction magazine. I'm also putting together a speculative poetry manuscript, but that's taking a long time. But the most recent book I have out is not purely speculative because I also write literary.

Rebecca (56:36.205)
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (56:42.19)
Mm-hmm.

Lorraine Schein (57:01.999)
poetry and it's called the Lady Anarchist Cafe. It has some fiction and some poetry of different kinds and it's available on Amazon and from Orono Media. That's about it.

Rebecca (57:05.183)
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (57:08.405)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (57:22.55)
Well, that's plenty. That sounds like it's gonna be a lot of fun to read. All right. Thank you all for having been on. It was a great pleasure to play with you all and to see all the wonderful words you could come up with. Next week on Shining Moon, Lovecraftian and cosmic horror will be our focus as Alicia Hilton will return along with Kenneth Height and Don Vogel. See you all then, and we are out.

Lorraine Schein (57:27.24)
Thank you.

Lorraine Schein (57:40.095)
I'm going to go to bed.

Alicia Hilton (57:42.137)
Hahaha!

Lorraine Schein (57:42.832)
Oh,

Lorraine Schein (57:48.104)
Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Alicia Hilton (57:48.205)
Thank you so much.

Deborah L. Davitt (57:50.146)
Thank you, bye bye.

Alicia Hilton (57:51.469)
Bye bye.