Here Be Tygers: Your Storytelling Guide

Joining today: former Air Force colonel, Health Coach and stage-four ovarian cancer survivor, Deanna Won How do you choose—do you define—who you are and what to do when you have only a month left to ‘your time’? When the doctors describe to you symptoms, procedures and what your few weeks in hospice will be like? For Deanna Won, a former military colonel, scientist and trained fighter, that decisi...

Joining today: Julia Perch, a Russian-American psychiatrist, illustrator and writer of the upcoming novel, Umbra Julia and I first met in an online writing group, where she confessed that she was struggling with some friends and family who felt that her story was either a work of witchcraft or inspired by the devil. As a tremendous believer in the power of dreams, imagination, and what lives on in...

As promised, we return this month with the second half (and finale!) to our adventures in Microscope: a storytelling game about all the ‘big things’ that happen and the smaller scenes between.  So join us tonight as our mad flight resumes with multiple clones, flavors of ice cream, androids, and the consumption of our would-be saviors. - J Show Notes • “The Girl from Ipanema”, orig. by Antônio Car...

Occasionally, Dave, Pablo, sometimes Stephen, and I get up to shenanigans.  This is one of those times. Microscope is a game of what’s true and not right about the world. And what follows from that, as a tale—as a narrative—that we define. Or at least it should be, in practice, in theory. Until we tried. With apologies to candy, teeth, Star Wars/Trek, Battlestar Galactica, androids and anything el...

Joining today: entertainer, co-host of The Geekly Oddcast, and host of Odder Worlds, David Herman What if an advent was something left behind by the gods, as proof that your gift had been recognized? Or currencies an acknowledgement of the relationship between those of great need and those with great power or verve? If what you were worth was measured not by success but the work?  We’ve spoken bef...

Hey all, Sometimes life is weird. And sometimes it goes strange. And sometimes you just have to sift through them both to see what new and unusual things you can make. Fortunately, we’re at a point now where I can describe that shape:  Long story short, Here Be Tygers is growing again. We’ll still be on Patreon, but you’ll see and hear both some new and a few more familiar faces.  That’s right. St...

Joining today: Eddie Turner, a professional coach, host of Keep Leading, and author of 140 Simple Messages To Guide Emerging Leaders Back in 2016, before Here Be Tygers was ever a name to this show, I started Jam Sessions as a sort of informal chat with folks about who they are, what they do and where they wanted to go.  Eddie was gracious enough to be our first guest and to this day I remain grat...

Joining today: author Lilibet Snellings, author of BOX GIRL: My Part-Time Job as an Art Installation (from Soft Skull Press) and the funniest person you know with MS The first thing I remember from my initial call to Lilibet was her talent for setting the dramatic to a well-lit narrative; one where all the places and players are carefully examined, illustrated, and given vibrancy by their all-too-...

Joining today: digital modeler for Blue Sky Studios, teacher and panelist on Diverse Toons, Andre Rodriguez  It’s easy to imagine a story: the decisions, mistakes, and sacrifices that can drive someone. And so much harder to survive, forgive, outlast the ‘character’ we can become in another person’s life. But what happens when the world we live in decides that for us? When we try to escape the lin...

Joining today: journalist and co-author of Conquering the Electron: the Geniuses, Visionaries, Egomaniacs, and Scoundrels who Built our Electronic Age, Eric Brach Most of the crew is off and away for the holidays, so I thought it might be a fun treat to revisit one of my earliest episodes from a previous show. Back then, I was focused almost entirely on authors and their work. So I created In Char...

Joining today: author, essay writer, and advocate for mental health and criminal justice reform, Dave Geiger Not every life goes according to ‘the plan’: be it God’s, some shadowy conspirator’s, or our own expectations at the time. We like to think in those moments—when we’re asked to change, to ‘do what’s right’, and revise our plans—that what we see and feel and act upon is irrefutable, or at th...

Joining today: longtime friend and fan of sci-fi, horror and Picard, Ken Hurt.  Sometimes, the world of Here Be Tygers is a kind, forgiving place. And sometimes, it’s an evening or night away from the fires that ‘those who dream too much’ cannot escape. On today’s episode, Ken and I talk about what it’s like to give a part of your world it’s own sense of time and space—before the story or your mai...

Joining today: creator of Phables, Greystone Inn, and Evil Inc, writer of The Webcomics Handbook, and host of ComicLab, Brad Guigar  Brad and I met at a Patreon live event earlier this year and within the first five minutes I knew we had to invite him. He’s full of stories and advice; just the kind of people we like. And he’s had quite the interesting career: from newspaper apprentice and early we...

And we’re back! Hope you all enjoyed the break while we set things up at our new home.  Last time, Dave and I talked about a few of our favorite tales and how they pull the reader in right from the beginning. So now we’ll share a few of our own, mostly from actual play or in-real-time storytelling games: the kind where the players can decide their own fate, the characters take on a strange life, a...

Joining today: frequent guest and Odder Worlds host, David Herman of TheBrothersHerman.  Though it may seem odd, the starting point of any tale we devise is often the hardest to find. Sometimes it helps to see what other bodies of work have done well (or not) and why. And sometimes we wander off into the wilds of the stuff we like before we talk about the tools, ideas and techniques we’ve tried. ...

Joining today: short story and horror writer, Matt Quinn, and author of The Thing in The Woods.  What happens when you allow a writer to take revenge on his fictional hometown? We talk with Matt about the Southern aesthetic, his love for monsters and splatter effects, and the many celebrities he would cast.  I had a rather severe bout of bronchitis when we recorded this, so please forgive any unus...

Joining today: Two-thirds of The Brothers Herman and Geekly Oddcast hosts, Stephen and Dave  What can I say? We sang a lot of Joni Mitchell and Jefferson Airplane when I was a child (I believe White Rabbit was my favorite). And yes, that is a title shout to some antisocial programming language. Sadly, the time lapse of our terrestrial efforts perished on that same day; though one artist’s renderin...

Joining today: Sci-fi, horror, and wrestling fan, and also my friend of over two decades, Ken H.  “Confusion,” as my screenwriting professor, Syd Field, used to say, “is the first step toward clarity.” Well that and, “the act of writing is like that of surfing: first, you have to catch the wave...” After which, he paused and let us contemplate.  ”And then?” We asked. To which he paused again, then...

Joining today: my longtime friends and two-thirds of our gaming group, David Herman (of The Geekly Oddcast and @BrothersHerman) and Pablo DiFerrari  We were rather punchy when we started this (12am) and supremely so by the end (at 2am). Nevertheless, we prevailed and had ourselves a grand old time by a coffee table with the ends of my world, a giant rock, and the sorts of folk of who would survive...